The 50th Games: Haymitch's Story
by CharlotteBlackwood
Summary: Twice as many tributes, and Maysilee Donner and Haymitch Abernathy make an unlikely pair, but it's a year full of surprising twists. Allusion to relations between Haymitch and his sweetheart, Salli, but no actual smut explicit THIS IS A NON-ROMANCE PAIR
1. Double Reaping: Haymitch

**A/N: This is a story in conjunction with but not in order of my Story of the Games series. It's the precursor, and there will be several stories after this which will be alternate tellings of several of the Story of the Games stories. There will be OCs present in those stories present in this and subsequent stories. You don't have to read both to understand any of it, but it would be clearer that way. If you would like to read both, the first story of the series is **_**The 66**__**th**__** Games: Finnick's Story**_**. This is effectively the companion series, as it were. This story will be told from the POVs of Haymitch and Maysilee. The first chapter is Haymitch.**

**-J**

I woke up on a blanket outside. I normally didn't sleep outside, but Salli's parents and my parents were a bit lax with us on reaping days, and I didn't want to sleep without her. We only had a couple of them left, then I would ask her to marry me, get a job in the mines, and ignore that I had ever been eligible for the Hunger Games. That was the plan. It would work out perfectly.

The main problem was that I was only sixteen. I had two more reaping days after that one, as did Salli. And as we had learned, this reaping day would be extra special.

It was the second Quarter Quell, the 50th Hunger Games, and the twist was that twice as many tributes would be offered up as usual. The odds were even less in my favor than usual, as they were in Salli's.

We'd been going steady for nearly a year, and everyone just assumed that we would get married, as did we. There had really never been anyone else for me but Salli.

She had had her pick of boys, of course, Seam and Town, but somehow she chose me and I wasn't so dumb as to complain. I knew a good thing when I saw it.

Honestly, that was certainly a lot of what she saw in me. I was smart, which, as her mother said, made me a "good catch". Apparently I was "going places", even if those places were simply the head of my mining group, which was only marginally better pay than if I were just a coal miner like every other man in the Seam. Apparently it was better, her parents told me, that she get a coal miner who's "going places" than a Town boy with no brains or ambition to speak of. Those were two things I had never been lacking in, and when I assured them of this, they gave me an indulgent laugh and passed me more bread.

We had tesserae taken out, of course. My name was in a couple dozen times, and Salli's was in about half as many, because it was just her and her parents. I had a couple of siblings to think about too, but Archibald and Io would need to take tesserae when they were old enough, too. Even with me bringing in extra wages, I would be marrying Salli, taking on her costs, and Archie was a growing boy. Food would be even more important in the years to come, if that was imaginable.

I ran my fingers through Salli's dark hair as she continued to sleep. We had hours until I had to get her back to her house to clean up for the reaping. I figured I could afford to let her enjoy a bit more time sleeping, peaceful, not thinking about the coming events of the day.

After about a half hour of me admiring her olive skin, silky dark hair, and sweet lavender scent, she began to stir, and I started kissing her neck, waking her ever more with gentle strokes of my lips.

She sighed.

"That's nice, Haymitch," she whispered, wrapping her little arms around my neck as I worked the kisses up to her face and smiled down at her.

She didn't have the usual gray eyes of the Seam. Hers were a sort of greenish blue, sparkling and dazzling. I kissed her nose and she giggled.

"Good morning, beautiful," I said softly. "Ready for the big day?"

I could have hit myself for saying it when her frown spread over her face, but she would have remembered sooner or later that it was a reaping day. She sighed.

"This is going to be an awful year," she pouted, hugging me tightly. "Four instead of two. We'll know all of them, I just know it."

"Maybe they'll all be from the town," I teased, tickling her a little in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Maybe they'll be people we've seen but never actually talked to."

"I don't know if that makes it better or worse," she moaned.

I sighed, hugging her.

District Twelve was a small district, relatively, and we almost always knew the kids who went off to the Games. Most were from the Seam, as the Town children hardly ever had to take tesserae and so the odds were in their favor. Two years ago, it had even been Salli's cousin. That was when I fell for her, watching the most beautiful girl in the District cry every day stirred something in me and I knew I wanted to protect her from everything that caused her pain.

We spent the morning being lazy, but that afternoon I delivered her back to her house, knowing it took girls longer to make themselves feel pretty. She always looked pretty to me, even when she insisted she was completely unsuitable.

I made my way back to my house, where Io and Archie were trying to help my mother decide what I was going to wear for reaping day. I never really cared much about my clothes. They didn't seem to matter much, in the grand scheme of things, and other people were always better at that, anyway, so I let them choose. It made them feel better, somehow, anyway, and why would I deny my family of that?

"What have we got this year?" I asked, tickling Io a bit as I looked at the shirt and pants they'd laid out for me.

Io was eight, and I could still remember the day she was born. My father named her, said he'd seen it in a book he'd read a long time ago and thought ever since that it would be a beautiful name for a girl.

It was better than Haymitch and Archibald, anyway.

She was a sweet little thing, too sensitive for the Seam, and so we often teased her that she was adopted, until my mother insisted that we stop because she was crying about it every night, terrified that she didn't actually belong with us.

As I said, sensitive.

I had actually felt quite bad for teasing her once I knew it had bothered her so much. Io was probably the sweetest little girl anyone had ever met, and she hated reaping days because she was always afraid I was going to die. When she was old enough to understand that the grain that made her bread made me more likely to be drawn, she tried not eating in hopes that I would be less likely to be drawn, but I assured her that starving herself wouldn't keep me safe and finally convinced her to start eating again.

"Do you like it, Haymitch?" she asked, her voice a little bit silly sounding because she'd lost one of the bottom front teeth, along with the gap between her two front teeth. If there had been an 's' in the sentence, I would have heard a comical whistle, which she was very embarrassed about, so we were careful not to laugh or tease, despite how funny it was.

"Absolutely, Io," I said earnestly, tickling her once more to earn a giggle. "You'd better get dressed though. I want you to look extra pretty today, all right? There will be more cameras than usual."

"They won't be looking at me," she said sadly sticking out her tongue. "They'll be focused on the people up for reaping."

"Still," I said, forcing a laugh and ushering her away. "I've got to change!"

I took a bath as Archie got dressed and then changed, letting my mother comb my hair.

It calmed my mother, I knew, for her to comb my hair on reaping day. It made her feel like she had some control over the events of the day, even though we all knew that no one but the Capitol had any measure of control.

"How's Salli?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"She's upset," I admitted. "She's always upset on reaping day."

"Of course," my mother sighed. "Such a sweet girl. I hope it's not her."

"Me too."

That was the extent of our conversing that day. There was no point saying that we hoped it wasn't me. It wouldn't do any good and the unsaid words lingered on the air anyway.

"Better get going," I said, looking at the clock. "Don't want to be late."

Attending the reaping was required, and if I didn't show up, I would be killed. My mother nodded, setting the comb down and kissing my cheek as I straightened my collar and made my way toward the town square, where Salli was already standing with her friends, smiling nervously at me as I got in line to sign in. She looked beautiful, of course, and she was visibly shaking as she stood there, clutching the hand of her best friend, Peggie.

Peggie and her older sister, Prissy, were both eligible for reaping, but this was Prissy's last year of eligibility. They were nearly done with the anxiety of reaping days in their family, whereas the anxiety in my family had barely begun. I couldn't help but be jealous, even though my jealousy was pointless. I couldn't begrudge them their coming peace of mind. They'd had six years of absolute agony already, and would have two more.

The Capitol escort, whatever her name was (She wasn't important, I'd decided long ago, because we just seemed to have a new one every three years or so. Nobody wanted to stay with District Twelve) had gotten up on stage with our single victor, Aina More, the winner of the 22nd Games, and our mayor.

I signed in, stood with the other sixteen-year-old boys, greeted them gruffly, and waited as the people on stage went through the ceremonial requirements of the day, reading the speeches probably written by the Capitol, telling us why we had the Games and what an important service they played for the world of Panem. I sighed, waiting for it all to be over.

"Lovely," the Capitol woman said with a smile as the mayor finished explaining the new rules of the Quarter Quell and why we were having twice as many children go, but the Capitol's excuses for killing even more children didn't concern me. "Ladies first."

I made fists, squeezing my hands so tightly so that my nails actually dug into my hands. If they called Salli's name, I would have completely lost it.

But the first name was Prissy. She made her way up to the stage and I could see Salli trying to soothe Peggie, who was an absolute mess.

"Maysilee Donner."

I didn't know Maysilee, but I knew she was my age… a Town girl, hugging her pretty blonde friend and twin sister as she made her way toward the stage, rather braver than I would have imagined for a Town girl.

I barely took notice. Salli was safe again. Whatever else happened couldn't possibly compare to the relief I felt at that knowledge.

A boy named Tomi, also from the Seam, also my age, was called up, and I realized he was standing only a few people over from me. I had done projects with Tomi in school, growing up. I had seen several schoolmates die over the years, but this was the first one I had actually had class with, someone I had actually known.

"Finally," the woman said in her sickening Capitol accent, spreading open the final slip of paper, "Haymitch Abernathy."

I clenched my fists again, not allowing myself to look at Salli, knowing she would be crying, knowing that seeing her cry would break me down completely as I held my chin up and marched up to the stage.

The thought of me being drawn had hardly occurred to me that day; I had been so worried about Salli that I had forgotten about myself.

Aina sized us up and congratulated us and we were led off to the Justice Building where we were put in separate buildings and forced to wait for the visitors we would receive, three minutes each group.

My family was first, of course. Little Io ran straight for me, sobbing uncontrollably, much like my mother was doing behind her. Archie and my father were sturdy, stoic, and it was a strange thing for Archie, but I think he realized that Io and our mother would need him to be strong while I was away.

"Shh," I soothed Io, petting her gently. "It's going to be all right, Io, you'll see. You're going to go home and eat that delicious stew you helped make, and you're going to remember that I'm going to win, just for you, all right? I'm going to win, and we'll be rich, and I'll make sure you have the prettiest dresses in District Twelve, all right?"

She nodded lamely, sniffling against my shirt, her little hands clutching at the fabric with surprising strength.

"It's going to be all right," I repeated. "It's going to be all right."

I cuddled Io for a few moments, I shook my father and brother's hands, and I kissed my mother on the cheek and the Peacekeepers led them back out of the door. Very soon after, Salli came in, curling up on my lap, weeping onto my shoulder as I petted her hair, like a larger version of Io, clinging to me for comfort and support as I pretend to be all right.

"It's going to be fine, Salli," I whispered, kissing her cheek. "I'm going to win. I'm going to win and come back and marry you and we're going to have a big house and lots of money and everything's going to be fine. I'm 'going places', remember?"

She gave a watery laugh as she kissed me, but we didn't say anything else for the remaining portion of the three minutes she was allotted. I just held her as she tried to calm herself, tried to get a grip on her tears.

"I love you, Haymitch," she whispered as she kissed me goodbye. "I hope you win."

I didn't know what to say, so the words slipped out of my mouth without me really thinking about it.

"Me too."

She was gone before I could kiss her again, before I could tell her how much I wanted her to not walk away. I had just pretended that it didn't matter, that I was going to win no matter what, but I didn't want to go to the Capitol. I wanted to go back home, to eat the stew Io had picked because it was my favorite, to curl up with Salli and talk about how we were going to spend the rest of our summer days. Instead, I walked out to the train with the other three tributes, feeling a bit sick to my stomach.

We settled down for dinner on the train, the four of us and Aina, who was already helping herself to the dinner, as well as our escort who was named Charity. Tomi was shifting awkwardly in his seat and Prissy still had tears in her eyes, probably from saying goodbye to her sister, but Maysilee was sitting rather bravely and steadily, meeting my gray eyes with her blue ones, Town eyes meeting Seam eyes, and I knew in that moment that Maysilee Donner would be a contender in these Games if she made it past the bloodbath.

"Well," Aina said casually, "it's very good to meet you all. I hope none of you take this personally, but as there are four of you, one of me, and there can only be one victor, I will play favorites. It's the nature of the beast. If you were from a district with more mentors available, you would all receive equal attention, but that's not going to be the case, so you'd better get used to it. I will help all of you, certainly, but I can't help all of you equally and that's just the truth of it."

Prissy looked very nervous about this, and Tomi seemed surprised, but Maysilee and I did not outwardly react. To me, it made perfect sense, and I had really more or less expected it. We were the only district this year with a single mentor. Several had only managed to scrounge up three, but we literally had only one victor in the history of the Games.

I looked over at Maysilee. She was a pretty girl, certainly. The fact that she was from the Town could have made her soft, but it seemed to only make her determined. From what I could remember of her, she would be the one to win Aina's favor. People worked with me because they had to, either because I was the smartest one or because the teacher assigned me as head of the group, or out of a favor to Salli who loved making me the leader. But people flocked around Maysilee because she was a nice person, because she made people feel good about themselves, because she was one of those leaders who led by lowering themselves, not by self-elevation. She would be the type of girl who could make the Seam girls not be jealous of her because it was hard to had someone so nice, whether she had more to eat or not.

Yes, Maysilee Donner would be my competition for a prayer at an advocate, and I was already losing the fight.


	2. Presenting District Twelve: Maysilee

**A/N: Maysilee's POV**

The reaping was a painful thing to watch that year, not just because I knew my face would be on the screen or because I was watching it from the train to the Capitol or because I knew that back home in District Twelve my twin sister would be so distraught she wouldn't even eat, but because there were just so many children being ripped from their homes.

Possibly this would be the most horrific set of Games in all of history. There were so many children reaped that even the Career districts didn't manage to put out a full stock of healthy, well-trained individuals, and there was a boy in District Two, twelve years old, who nobody volunteered for. Aina mentioned that he was the mayor's son.

In fact, despite the fact that there were many sixteen through eighteen year olds, a quarter of the competitors would be twelve years old. Odds were that every tribute I ate dinner with would either kill a twelve-year-old or be killed by one. That was a sickening thought.

Of the youngest competitors, it was District Six that made my heart absolutely ache. Not only were three of their tributes in their first year of eligibility, but the fourth was only thirteen, and the two girls were the twin daughters of one of the District Six victors and mentors, Marlene. Marlene would be mentoring her daughter, Hadley, but Hayley would be mentored by Cicely, a younger, more recent victor from District Six. I couldn't begin to imagine the agony she must be in, as a mother, knowing that she would have to support one daughter's life when the life of the other was essentially out of her hands.

And twins, of all things.

Of course, if I won, I would never have kids. Victor's children were reaped far too often for it to be coincidental.

But I couldn't judge, I decided. I wasn't her, I didn't know what she had gone through. After all, perhaps she fell hopelessly, madly in love and they just had to have children, or perhaps she hadn't wanted children either but they came along unplanned.

Margo and I were unplanned.

And whatever the reasoning, the girls did exist, and what was I supposed to say, "You shouldn't be here, your parents made a grave mistake in having you and you earned this reaping, and it serves your mother right for being so selfish"? No, that didn't seem fair.

Even on the Capitol train, the rooms were lush and the beds were incredibly comfortable. The fact that I didn't really know any of the other Tributes very well didn't bother me. I wasn't there to make friends. It might make them a bit easier to kill, when it came down to it.

At the same time, I couldn't help but wonder if I would be better off with an ally. After all, forty-seven on one were terrible odds, and even if half of them died in the first day, I was looking at twenty-three to one, and most of the time people didn't win without at least temporary alliances.

But Tomi looked like a skittish deer, Prissy's very presence made me feel a bit exhausted, and Haymitch… I didn't trust Haymitch. His sharp gray eyes were too clever, too shifty. If he were my ally, there would be no way of knowing when he was going to be helpful and when he was going to stick a knife in my back.

I would be looking outside my District for an alliance, it seemed, although pickings were slim unless I wanted to lead an army of munchkins.

But it had been a long day, and I curled up in the bed assigned to me on the Capitol train. In the morning, I would have breakfast and we would arrive not long after, to be taken to stylists, made to look what the Capitol thought was pretty, paraded around on chariots, and then the training, the Games, would really begin. So I turned over, stared at the wall, and tried to sleep. Really, I tried. I was tired, it should have been as simple as closing my eyes, but the sobbing of my sister was haunting me in the back of my mind and I knew that if I did sleep, nightmares would come.

I must have slept a bit, though, because I certainly woke up in the morning. With a shiver, I realized the blankets had slid off me in the night. It was nearly time for breakfast, anyway, so I slipped out of the nightclothes, took a shower, and put on a green dress that was hanging in the closet which the Capitol escort told me I was welcome to. The fabric was a rich sort of satin and I felt very out of place in the dress, but it looked nice.

I went out to breakfast where Haymitch and Tomi were already eating in silence. Prissy must have been a late sleeper. I greeted them, sat down to butter my toast, and noted how neither even acknowledged my presence.

Aina's warning about only helping one of us fully had certainly had an effect: we were already enemies. Whether that was the effect she had been going for or not, it was impossible to tell. I didn't let it get to me as I buttered my toast, knowing it was only a matter of days for most of us until we would be dead.

We didn't discuss much at breakfast, even after Aina and Prissy were awake and attempting to stir up a conversation between us, because everyone could feel the tension in the air. Aina did tell us that the stylists would do a fantastic job and not to worry too much, but that was essentially the gist of her advice for the first day.

"Once you get through the chariots," she explained, "then we know what sort of impression of you we'll have to work with and we really start planning."

We could see the Capitol as we pulled up, large, shinning, colorful. The people were clambering around the train to get a glimpse of us as we came in, eager to see the newest tributes, even if we were just from District Twelve.

Our District was the joke of Panem. We were the furthest away from the Capitol, if you didn't count the exploded remains of District Thirteen. We'd only ever had one Hunger Games victor. We were just a bunch of simple coal miners to them, not interesting, not exciting, not even real contenders.

I looked out at the smiling, waving, cheering people and wondered how many of them were already betting against us, and would be buying things for our competition, once the time came.

Money was everything in Panem. The poorest of the poor were the worst off, and not just because they were poor. Their odds for being chosen for the Games were much higher in the poor districts without Careers to volunteer, because they had to sign up for tesserae, as I knew all my fellow Twelve tributes had done. What's more, they didn't have training, so they were less likely to get sponsors, and sponsors often hold the power of life and death in their checkbooks.

We filled off the train and were taken directly to our prep teams. Mine, Alexandrina, Aristarchus, and Maureen began hosing me down immediately, although I wasn't half as dirty as Tomi had been. By their standards, though, I was covered in grime.

About half an hour after the water had started to run clear (apparently there was a subtle murk I couldn't see) they began the process of waxing my body. When I was completely hairless, after about ten minutes of tweezing stray hairs, they hosed me down again and then left me naked on the table for my stylist, Treasure.

Treasure was a tall, thin woman with purple hair and her skin tinted an ever-so-light shade of blue. Her voice sounded like little birds chirping, which was probably cute in small doses, but I honestly just wanted to throttle her. She told me how we were going to be dressed as coal miners, which didn't surprise or intimidate me at all. At least I wasn't going to be naked. We wouldn't cause much of a stir, but we weren't likely to get sponsors anyway, so I would just have to have an impressive training score.

But what would I do? I realized that my combat skills were less than impressive, that my camouflage would probably leave something to be desired… I wasn't strong or particularly quick or… or… I had good aim. My eyesight was excellent. I wasn't sure if that would translate to things I threw going where I wanted them too, but I would be able to pick out points to hit from across the forest… Maybe… maybe there would be something I could aim without having to throw.

That night I was dressed in a silly, skimpy little coal mining outfit, much like the outfits worn by Tomi, Prissy, and Haymitch. We all looked absurd, but no more absurd than the giant computer chips down in District Three. I just wished it wasn't quite so chilly in the evening at the Capitol, because I felt like I wasn't wearing anything.

My first instinct was to curl up against whoever was closest to me for warmth, but I was standing next to Haymitch, and that didn't seem like a great idea when I thought it over briefly, so instead I tried not to shiver. As the chariots began to leave, the four of us stepped onto ours, giving each other grim looks and holding on to the edge of the chariot as it jerked into motion. I smiled as wide as I could to the audience, waving and trying to ignore the burly stiffness that was Haymitch beside me. The screens, unsurprisingly, were focused on one of the District One girls, who was covered in beautiful jewels, and was much prettier than her equally-encrusted female counterpart.

The President said his bit, and I didn't listen. It was all about the history behind the Games, and we'd all heard that about a million times before.

My heart was pounding, though, and I smiled broadly, not only for the colorful Capitol people, but knowing that there was every possibility that at any moment, my face would be on the screen back home, and Margo would want me to smile.

Haymitch was surly, but I hadn't expected much else. After all, he didn't talk much. I'd never known anyone to really take much of a liking to him, as he was sarcastic and self-important.

No, that wasn't true. He had a sweetheart, Salli. A very nice girl. Nobody could figure out why she'd chosen him.

Again, that wasn't entirely true. He was incredibly good looking. And although you didn't see it with anyone else, Haymitch had always treated Salli like she was the most important person in the world, and most girls would have liked for him to treat them that way, if only for a little while.

There was something else, too, a memory I had pushed to the back of my mind, but something I never would have forgotten.

The woods are fenced in, of course, but there's a nice wooded area on the edge of town where the older children, like us, would go to get some privacy. It was that or the slag heap. I had been going for a walk for a while one day when I heard noises I hadn't heard before, noises I knew weren't indigenous to the area, and I hid behind a tree, spotting movement off in the near distance.

It was Salli and Haymitch, on a blanket, in the trees, naked, wrapped around each other tightly, moving against each other and kissing passionately. The way she moaned his name… I figured a lot of girls would have wanted that, too, whatever he was like the rest of the time.

That night, I felt very uncomfortable, heading back to the twelfth floor with Haymitch standing next to me, remembering that day in the woods. It wasn't as if I hadn't thought such things happened. After all, half the girls in school were talking about how Salli and Haymitch were 'intimate', but I guess I just hadn't expected to actually stumble upon the act itself. It also occurred to me that I had already seen parts of Haymitch's body that many would have given their arm to get a peek at.

And he had no idea.

I went off to bed, peeling off my minimal coal miner outfit, jumping into the shower, washing away all of the makeup that made me feel years older than I was. I ran my fingers through my hair, pressing some scented jets to wash away the feel of crawling on my skin as I thought of Haymitch, but not Haymitch and Salli… Haymitch and me…

Why would I think that? I was going into the arena with the boy, not starting a school project. I shouldn't be thinking of how he looked naked, I should be thinking about how to kill him, how he might kill me.

But once the image was in my head, it was more than a bit difficult to get it out. I settled for pushing it to the side as I headed out to the living area to discuss the aftermath of the presentation with Aina and the others.

Haymitch was sitting off to the side, frowning.

He was always frowning.

Prissy and Tomi were sitting on the edges of theirs seats, eagerly drinking in Aina's words as if her mere wisdom could keep them alive in the arena. If only it were that simple.

"Basically we were forgettable," Haymitch said finally, alerting us that he was still present. "District Twelve, coal miners again, forgettable as always. Right?"

"Well," Aina began diplomatically.

"Am I right?" he said forcefully, emphasizing each word.

Aina nodded.

We all sighed with disappointment, as if any of us had expected any different, and Haymitch simply nodded, satisfied that his thoughts had been confirmed, retreating once more to the world inside his head as he frowned at the floor.

What was he thinking? Was he thinking about the Games, about training, about how to not be forgettable? Was he thinking about Salli and how he wanted her in his arms? Was he thinking about me?

Of course not. Why would he be thinking about me? That was an absurd thought, one of the more absurd thoughts I'd ever had. But the idea that he might be had caused me to feel a warm tingle of excitement, short-lived though it was.

"We can discuss training at breakfast in the morning," Aina said as Prissy began to yawn. "I think you all need rest, and tomorrow's a very big day, if you want to start making an impression."

Prissy went straight to bed after Aina, followed not even a minute later by Tomi. For some reason, I didn't move. I didn't want to move. I stared at the floor so that I didn't look at Haymitch, but I was painfully aware of his presence, of the fact that he wasn't looking at me. It was probably a full twenty minutes we sat there, not looking at each other, in the silent room on the top floor of the building in the Capitol where we were getting prepared to kill or be killed in just a few days' time. The night seemed to be getting darker, closing in around me, and finally I said, "So, how did you and Salli get together?"

I had no idea how the words came out of my mouth or why, but Haymitch seemed a bit taken aback by the question. We still weren't look at each other, but he didn't answer right away, and his hands and feet shifted awkwardly.

"I just asked her out one day. She said yes. It's not a very exciting story."

I pursed my lips thoughtfully.

"Why did you ask her?"

He snorted.

"Because she's beautiful."

I didn't have to voice my surprise. Obviously, Salli was incredibly beautiful, but the idea of that being why Haymitch had chosen her seemed very out of character, somehow.

"What?" he said in a sarcastic, amused sort of voice. "Not what you expected me to say? Well, I'm human, you know. I've got an appreciation for beauty just like everybody else. I just don't have a weakness for it."

"You mean," I said, working through that, "that if she was in the Games, you would be able to kill her because–"

"No," Haymitch sighed. "I don't have a weakness for her beauty. I have a weakness for _her_. Because I love her. I would never be able to kill her. It's a very good thing I don't have to, then, isn't it?"

I wondered if I would be able to kill Haymitch. Love was a very strong word, but I did seem to have some sort of attraction to him, and he was certainly beautiful. Did that mean I had a weakness for beauty, or for him?

He said goodnight not long after that, taking off for his room, leaving me in the dark, alone.

With a sigh, I finally headed up to my room, curling up in bed again, staring at the wall, wondering about training. What sort of stations would there be? Which should I focus on? How would I do compared with the other tributes? Some people kept to their strengths, others would avoid their strengths. But what were my strengths? How was I to know?

I supposed I would have to wait and see, but something told me that Haymitch already had a plan, already knew his strengths and his strategy, and I couldn't help but feel that it was incredibly dangerous to be a step behind him, no matter how soon into the Games…


	3. Training: Haymitch

**A/N: Haymitch's POV**

The showers were very, very weird. I had to be very carefully not to come out smelling like a florist's shop, especially as it was the first day of training. I didn't think the other tributes would put much store by a guy who smelled like flowers.

I dressed in the training outfit laid out for me, probably by my stylist or prep team or whoever. It didn't matter. It was at the foot of my bed, clearly intended for me to wear, so I put it on.

Then I went down for breakfast, to find myself the first one up. The Capitol attendants had already set out food, so I began to eat, putting marmalade on toast, thinking about my very odd conversation the night before with Maysilee Donner.

What was it to her why I was with Salli? I wasn't aware that she and Salli were even on speaking terms, so why would it matter? They certainly weren't friends, that was the main thing. It would be hard enough killing Prissy, if it came down to it, but I was glad it wasn't Peggie. Not that I cared at all for Peggie, but Salli would have been very heartbroken about me killing her best friend.

I tried to think back on what I knew of Maysilee Donner. She was Margo Donner's twin, the stronger, more assertive of the two. People liked her. Their best friend was the apothecary's daughter, the pretty blonde girl who had as many admirers as Salli and had healing hands. I knew that the baker's son, Zemel Mellark, was absolutely in love with her, but so was Liron Everdeen, a Seam boy a couple of years older than me. Zemel was likable, but a bit of a pushover. If I had any vested interest in the whole sordid affair, my money would have been on Liron, who had the guts to go after what he wanted, at least, I was sure.

But none of that explained why she would ask me about Salli. I knew that many of the silly girls at school were interested in the details of my love life for whatever reason, but Maysilee didn't quite seem the type for that, so I wondered if she was bringing up Salli in an attempt to weaken me, or to associate herself with Salli or… something that would make it harder for me to kill her.

The others came out for breakfast and Aina settled down, not touching her food, clearly deep in thought for a moment before she decided what she wanted to say to us.

"Do any of you have any previously acquired skills?" she said.

We looked around at each other and shrugged. Apparently, if any of us had skills, none of us was going to disclose them in the company of the others.

"Very well," she sighed. "If any of you want to talk with me privately, pull me aside. Other than that, don't ignore the survival stations, try not to hurt yourselves, and if you can managed to learn how to swing a sword or throw a knife, that's to your credit."

I wasn't a weakling. I was sure I could managed to swing a sword, and I would probably do decently with a knife, but I didn't like the idea of being forced into combat. I would focus on survival skills. Traps, looking for water, foraging, looking for poisonous plants… Those were the sort of things stupid tributes died from, and I wasn't going to be a stupid tribute. If I couldn't win, I at least didn't want to be forgettable.

Charity walked us down to the training center where the other tributes had more or less congregated. Some Capitol person told us the basic rules: no sparring with other tributes, don't just focus on the combats skills, the Gamemakers would be watching occasionally, and the third afternoon we would display our skills privately with the Gamemakers one at a time. We all knew the rules. They never changed, and we'd heard all about them on the television year after year.

As soon as we were dismissed, I decided to check out snares. Two twelve-year-old girls were already there, quick, spritely things, the daughters of Marlene from District Six. They smiled shyly at me and although I wanted to smile back, I just frowned at them. They made me think of Io, and it would be dangerous to underestimate them for that.

After all, their mother had won at fifteen, a small, spritely girl, seemingly innocent but with the camouflage skills of an expert and the willingness to use a knife any way necessary. I would be indifferent.

Tomi sat down beside me and turned to the girls.

"Hey," he said, attempting to make a snare. "How do I tell you apart?"

The girls laughed nervously, obviously thinking that they got that question all the time.

"Well," one of them said, "Hadley's hair's a bit darker. Hayley's got straighter eyebrows. What do you think?"

I rolled my eyes, but Tomi studied them. It was obvious which one was which, but the boy seemed to really struggle. He shook his head finally and said, "No, I don't know."

The girls giggled again and I sighed, "You're Hayley, and you're Hadley," pointing to the one who had spoken second.

They blinked at me.

"How did you know?" Hadley asked, shocked.

I shrugged.

"I remember an interview where your mother said Hayley didn't talk to strangers. Ever. Even if it was really important. She also said that you're fearless. So it was obvious that you were the one talking."

She pursed her lips and I saw in her eyes in that moment the same determined look that I had seen in Maysilee's on the train, the one that had told me that the Town girl would be a contender. I realized that if any of the twelve-year-olds had a prayer of holding on, it was Hadley. She must have gotten the fight in the family.

I got bored of snares quickly and went over to check out the section on edible plants. I recognized a lot of things that they showed, but not which ones were edible. Despite the fact that my family was hard off, we hadn't resorted to foraging for food. I traded Archie's old clothes in the Hob for things for Io, so my parents could focus on putting money toward food. Considering the amount Archie was starting to eat, even when he cut himself off long before he was full, it was probably a good thing I was gone for a few weeks, allowing them to feed him, make him look a bit healthier.

I wandered around the various survival skills. I wasn't particularly good at anything, but that didn't matter much if I could outthink my opponents, which I was certain I could do. By the end of the first day, I wasn't sure of anything except for the fact that the Careers, even twelve-year-old Rich, were a force to be reckoned with, and a force that seemed intent on all banding together despite their incredible size. Although they had a larger group to pick off than usual, I was certain they would be even more deadly than in a typical year.

That night at dinner, I didn't say much. I had decided that Aina wasn't going to give me her attention, so I'd better get used to not having it, and quickly.

"Does anyone have any interesting stories from today?" she said good-naturedly, as if trying a different tack with us. It wasn't fooling me. She was hardly what I would have called sympathetic. Which was fine. She was practical. I could respect that. I didn't respect the sudden change in tone.

I ignored it, however. I went about the second day of training in much the same way, noting on the second day that there was a group from District Eight which held a fair amount of promise. They stuck together like glue, Rebeckah, Rosanna, and Fletcher, and they had the potential to be rather dangerous, particularly as close as they obviously were. They ate lunch together, ignored the rambunctious, self-impressed Careers, and managed to make some of the smaller children shake in their shoes in much the same way the Careers were attempting.

In the afternoon, I ran into Rosanna at the camouflage station.

"Hello," she said as she casually painted her arm to match the tree she was trying to emulate. "District Twelve?"

"Yeah," I said, looking at the paints, grabbing a bowl, and trying to cover myself with it.

"I haven't seen you try the combat sessions," she said with a small smile. "No good or scared? Or hiding some secret skill, perhaps?"

"No secrets," I admitted. "Not scared. I don't know if I'd be any good, but I figure anything I could learn here wouldn't be any more use to me in the arena than what I can already manage. I may try some tomorrow."

She considered me for a moment, her sandy brown hair falling lazily across her face as she kept her head tilted down at her arm, her eyes looking at me through the curtain of her hair. Rosanna seemed to have decided something, and she finally said, "You're smart. That's dangerous. For the rest of us, I mean."

"I guess it could be," I said with a smirk. "Of course, you'd be rather hard to find, wouldn't you?"

I pointed down at her arm. She grinned.

"Well, I hope so, but mud itches. You're smart. You'd find me pretty easily, I think. But maybe the Careers won't. That's my goal."

"It's a good goal," I sighed. "This station is stupid," I snapped, slamming down the bowl when I realized I'd succeeded at nothing but making my arm dirty. "Have a nice day."

She just laughed as I walked off sourly, and I realized I'd said my pleasantry with a tone of agitation, as if I didn't want her to have a nice day.

But I did. After all, odds were she wouldn't have very many nice days left. It would be better for her to gather as many of them as she could.

That evening, we had more talks about the training which Maysilee and I did not participate in. It seemed I had been wrong about one thing with Maysilee Donner: She wasn't aiming to charm Aina. She left that sordid work for Tomi and Prissy, who undoubtedly needed it, but for the life of me I couldn't recall what Maysilee had been up to during training. Certainly nothing impressive, if I couldn't even recall seeing her.

I was getting the uncomfortable feeling that I wasn't going to have a very impressive training score if I didn't at least learn how to do something combative on the morning of the third day. So the third morning, I woke up, ate a larger breakfast than normal, and slipped on the silly training clothes that they had us wear. When Charity led us down to the training area, I went right away to working with knives, swords, spears… There was no telling what would be in the Cornucopia, what I would be able to get my hands on.

There was the thought of what to do at the Cornucopia that I realized I hadn't considered yet. There would be packs, weapons, even things like tents. The juiciest stuff was almost always in the very center of the tributes, and either the circle would be bigger because there were so many of us, or we would be packed in more tightly. Either way, it would make it harder for me to get supplies.

I looked over at the Career pack. That year had a group so ready, so prepared, so in-tune with each other despite their size that they could have easily taken out half of us in that one instance of scrambling for supplies. Despite the temptation of the supplies, I knew that if I tried to fight for the big stuff, I would probably be asking for a knife in the back or a spear through my chest, so I made up my mind as I tossed knives at targets, happy if I even hit the target at all, that I would grab whatever was right in front of me and run. If others were distracted, I might grab what I didn't have to fight for, but I would not stick around for the bloodbath at the Cornucopia.

With any luck, the Careers would kill off all of the twelve-year-olds so I wouldn't have to.

At lunch, the area was more somber than the past couple of days. Nobody was bothering to show off to the other tributes. The focus of the day was to impress the Gamemakers, not each other. The Careers were bursting with confidence as they ate their stew, clearly not at all intimidated by the thought of their skills being judged for all to see.

They had been training all their lives, after all, so perhaps they weren't scared.

I poked at my stew, trying to decided what skill I would show. I would go third from the end, after Tomi, before Maysilee. Prissy would be the very last. It would be late in the evening by this point, so I had to come up with something unforgettable, something that would at least catch their attention, especially because they hadn't seen me do much during the actual group training sessions. I bit the inside of my cheek, frustrated, trying to decide whether I was going to go for long-range (which was generally more impressive in combat against dummies) or hand-to-hand, which was likely to be a better skill of mine.

We sat outside the center, waiting for our turns, starting with the males of District One, then the females. Then the males of District Two, then the females. It took hours for them to get through just half of the contestants, and by then I was bored out of my mind, never mind the Gamemakers, who probably had a mix of horrible and interesting and boring presentations from the variety of tributes who were attempting to impress them. Maysilee was fidgeting, obviously nervous. Prissy looked ready to cry, and Tomi seemed to be muttering a mantra under his breath.

District Eight, District Nine, and by the time District Ten was done I thought I was going to fall asleep sitting up. I was sure not to impress anyone, however, if I was rubbing sleep from my eyes as I went in. When Queenie went in, the tension between the District Twelve tributes was so palpable I thought it was going to punch me in the face. Then Tomi was called and he went in with his head held as high as he could muster.

Then a voice said "Haymitch Abernathy" and I took a deep breath, not saying a word to the girls as I made my way into the training center.

The Gamemakers were not interested in me. They were hardly looking at me as I made my way in, announced myself, grabbed a few knives and a spear and started throwing.

I didn't hit any bulls-eyes, but I wasn't bad. I got close enough that I would probably get a six. They let me go and I went back to the twelfth floor where Tomi was sitting, frowning, clearly upset. Whatever he had done, he didn't think he'd done particularly well at it. About an hour later, we hadn't even discussed our strategies with Aina, any of us, because they were already posting the training scores.

Careers didn't score lower than a six, and Ander, Regan, and Zavia had all earned tens. Most scored five or six, with a couple of younger tributes in Eight and Nine scoring fours. The announcer said that Queenie got a seven, then moved on to District Twelve.

Tomi got a four, and turned a sickly shade of green.

"Haymitch Abernathy," the screen said, putting up a picture of my glowering face. "Seven."

Seven wasn't bad for someone without training, I decided. They wouldn't think me an easy target like Tomi, but I wasn't an immediate threat, like Rebeckah and Fletcher, who earned eights.

Prissy got a six, surprising everyone, including herself.

"Maysilee Donner," the voice continued. "Two."

I looked over at Maysilee. Her face was blank, unreadable. Sometimes, people got purposefully low training scores, hiding their skills to surprise people in the arena. It was possible, though, that she had no skills to speak of, that she would be the first to die when it came down to it. It was low enough that if she played it right, though, she could stay alive while the Careers picked off more challenging kills and left her for an easy meal later.

The question was, which was her strategy? Did she have a strategy? Would she be killing me, or I her, or would we somehow manage to avoid dealing with each other in the arena? After all, it would be a large group. It was entirely possible that we wouldn't even see each other once we left the Cornucopia at the sound of the gong.

Charity and Aina were discussing scheduling for dealing with our interview training and techniques. I didn't care. I knew what I was doing for the interview. I was going to be myself.

Some people would think I was charming, confident, cocky, arrogant, whatever. I didn't care how they read it. I wasn't going to pull some stupid gimmick. I didn't need on. I got a solid training score. I was smart. That was all I need. Maysilee, on the other hand, would have to have some sort of strategy. The real question was what her strategy would be, and how she planned on keeping herself alive with a training score of two. But that would wait for tomorrow.


	4. Welcome to Hell: Maysilee

**A/N: Maysilee's POV. This chapter is dedicated to **_**Purpl3**_**, whose alerting this story inspired the final push of finishing the last chapter. THANK YOU **_**PURPL3**_**, for your support. I hope you continue to enjoy this story.**

**-J**

I hadn't tried to get a two. The most frustrating thing about it was that I had truly tried my best to impress them, but apparently my hands didn't know how to get things to the far-off things I could see. Spears, knives, hand axes… none of them would go where I wanted them to, and apparently my attempts were either boring or comical, but certainly not dangerous.

And Haymitch had gotten a seven, on par with several of the Careers, better than a couple of them. Even Prissy had managed a score that matched the girls in District One. My attempts to do something I might be good at had failed so miserably all I could do that night was curl up on the plush, Capitol bed and cry bitterly, but sleep never came.

I was going to die. I was going to die soon, probably brutally, and my sister and parents were going to see it and know what a failure I was while Haymitch went off and killed them all, marrying Salli and living out a happy, peaceful life in District Twelve, probably never thinking about me again.

The following morning, I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed, despite the fact that I knew I had to. I had to face the interview, the humiliation of trying to make the world thing that the two I had earned was all a part of some plan, and not the frightfully pathetic attempt at being as brutal as I could be. They would dress me up, put pretty make-up on me, make me look like a little painted doll, but nothing to fill in for the lack of ability to wield basic weapons well enough to kill stationary, non-living targets. I could almost see Haymitch sneering down at me as he or someone else stabbed me, could almost hear his sarcastic voice ringing in my ears.

The ringing lasted about halfway through when my prep team had gotten my makeup done. I sat as still as I could, not listening as they chatted over my head about dinner parties and the latest music chips from District Three. It was strange to me that their lives consisted of such things, when I didn't even know what a music chip looked like.

I very much ignored my stylist as I was stuffed into a long lavender gown. It was very pretty. I might have been able to appreciate it better if not for the constant thought of my impending death.

My hands were, thankfully, not shaking as I stood in line, waiting to go out for the interviews, onto the stage, packed in even more tightly than usual. I was standing between Prissy and one of the boys of District Eleven, anxious and very nearly quivering.

"How do you feel, Maysilee?" Prissy said slowly. "Have you got a plan for the interview?"

"Yes," I lied. "Have you?"

"Sort of," Prissy sighed. "Aina gave me some ideas and ran me through a few mock interviews, but she didn't seem very happy with the results, so it didn't do very much to calm my nerves."

I laughed in a mild sort of way. I didn't want her thinking I was against her, but I certainly didn't want to let her think I was intimidated in any way, or even that we were allies. Prissy may have gotten a better score than mine, but her aversion to blood would be a liability.

Three minutes for each person meant the interviews would last for hours, longer than normal. They led us onto the stage and I had to listen to the pretty blonde girl, Betony, from District One gush about how honored she was like she was a walking pack of sugar. Aleesha from District Two took a sly approach, coming across as intelligent and cunning and I had to admit that I wasn't interested in crossing her. Twelve-year-old Mathilda from District Three, who had gotten an eight for her training score, was just a bit small to be pulling off the cocky persona she attempted to exude, but her mentor was practically senile, so I didn't expect that she'd gotten much advice.

Zavia, the girl from District Four who seemed like the one to beat, was hard, ruthless, and intimidating, just as she had been during the training sessions. Little Hadley from District Six went for likeable, which suited her just fine, as she was clearly charming, talkative, and easy to get along with. It was a huge contrast from her shy twin. Hadley would be getting any sponsors interested in the pair of them, that was certain. Rebeckah, from District Eight, also tried the ruthless tact, and probably would have been a lot more convincing in a different year, where Zavia hadn't been around with her ten, which certainly trumped Rebeckah's eight.

Jacqui, from District Ten, also tried to be likeable, but she was too nervous to pull it off, and she paled in comparison with Hadley, who was born to work a crowd.

I decided my best bet ran with being sweet, so when Dominic (attempting to be sly) finished his three minutes and I was called forward, Caesar took my hand and said, "Well, Maysilee, it's got to be somebody every year. How do you feel about having the lowest training score? Got a secret up your sleeve?"

I smiled as best I could and replied, "Well, Caesar, if I did, I certainly wouldn't be telling about it in my interview. But I feel fine. It reflects well the skills I displayed for the Gamemakers, and I'm not at all upset about it. I'm just going to do my best and see what happens."

"I like your attitude," Caesar said with a smile. "Now, tell us about the reaping, Maysilee. You were hugging a couple of girls. Who were those girls? One looks quite a bit like you…"

"That's my twin, Margo," I said with a self-depreciating smile. "Hi, Margo!"

I waved at the camera and there was a tittering in the audience.

"And the other girl?" Caesar said, clearly touched by my action.

"That's our best friend, Lavender. Her father is the District Twelve apothecary."

"Very lovely, both of them. You were very brave at the reaping. I can see that you're not particularly nervous now, either. Do you think you can win the Games?"

I bit my lip a little, wondering how to answer. It was difficult because I wasn't really sure how I felt about it all, what I thought.

"I think it's always possible," I said slowly. "Anything can happen, and I'm certainly going to try."

"Absolutely," Caesar said with a smile. "That's all the time we have, but thank you, Maysilee Donner!"

Prissy went up next, eyes downcast as she took the center of the stage.

"It's all right, Prissy, I don't bite," Caesar joked, and Prissy smiled shyly up at him. "Now, it seems you have a sister as well?"

"Yes," Prissy said softly. "Peggie."

They talked for a bit about Peggie, and about nothing in particular as Caesar Flickerman tried to break Prissy out of her shell. Finally, he asked, "And you got a six, Prissy. Tell me, how do you feel about this score?"

"Amazed," she said honestly. "Surprised. I didn't think I'd done anything good enough to get more than a four."

It wasn't long until her time was up and Tomi went forward, and he attempted to be funny, but even with Caesar trying to help him along, his jokes fell a bit flat. They steered clear of his four from training, and then, before I even realized it, Haymitch Abernathy was being called up.

"So, Haymitch, what do you think of the Games having one hundred percent more competitors than usual?" asked Caesar.

Haymitch shrugged. "I don't see that it makes much difference. They'll still be one hundred percent as stupid as usual, so I figure my odds will be roughly the same."

The audience burst out laughing and Haymitch gave them a half smile. Part of me wanted to hit him, but this was the Haymitch I was familiar with, the Haymitch I expected: cocky, arrogant, above it all. And I didn't want to hit Haymitch, not really. Just like I didn't really want to kill him, but I thought I probably could, if it came down to it.

I tried not to listen to the remainder of the banter between them. I just wanted it to be over. The silly laughter of the Capitol audience was making me nauseous. Haymitch's sneer was making me nauseous. I just wanted it to be over.

And then, suddenly, it was, and the anthem played and I realized the interviews, the dreaded interviews, were done. I continued smiling as we made our way off the stage and followed Haymitch and Prissy to the elevator, Tomi close behind me as we squeezed in and made our way to the top floor.

Aina must have grabbed an earlier elevator up because she was waiting for us with our stylists and Charity. She smiled at us with her typical smile, but there was something in this one… she seemed proud? Of who? Haymitch, certainly, charming the crowd and… and me? What was there to be proud of me for? True, I hadn't gone on and on about my lack of skills, but had I really been likely to earn sponsors with that, in light of my practically nonexistent training score?

But she said next to nothing to any of us, merely wishing us a good night's sleep, telling us that this was the last she would be seeing us unless one of us would be fortunate enough to win, and that she hoped we went down with a fight, if nothing else. Haymitch didn't even blink at the grim parting words, but even I swallowed a little, realizing just how close I was, possibly, to the end. To my end.

I felt as though I was going through the motions as I went to my room, pulled off my interview dress, climbed into the shower, allowed the warm jets to caress my body, trying very, very hard not to think too much about the following morning. Despite having watched the Games all of my life, I wasn't sure how it was going to work on my end. Trying to puzzle out the unimportant details, while something in my nature, certainly couldn't do me any good. What did it matter how I got from my bed to the disc by the Cornucopia as long as it was happening no matter what?

But despite pulling on my blue silk nightgown and staring at the wall of the Capitol room, I couldn't sleep. It must have been an hour of lying awake in the dark before I went out to the living area to find Prissy sitting on the couch, crying. For some reason, it hit me in that moment that I hadn't said a full sentence to her since we'd arrived in the Capitol. Not that I had talked with her much before that in life, but she was one small bit of home with me in the Capitol.

I sat down beside her, gently patting her shoulder. I moved my hand in a small circle, because I knew that calmed Margo most when she was upset. I wasn't sure if it worked for others, but I thought it might. In several minutes, Prissy had calmed slightly and looked up at me.

"You're up," she said dully. "I – I didn't wake you–?"

"No," I assured her. "I couldn't sleep anyway. "I doubt Tomi and Haymitch are sleeping much, either, but boys are too silly to admit it to the rest of us by coming out of their rooms."

She gave a watery laugh and I refrained from asking what was wrong, although I very much wanted to. If she wanted to tell me, she would in her own time. We simply sat in silence for quite a while, not quite used to each other's company, but fully aware that her tears would need to be discussed sooner or later. She sighed.

"I miss home," she said finally. "I miss Peggie. I don't want to go to the arena, I want to go back to my family. I want to see my family again."

She began to sniffle again and I petted her gently, making soothing sounds.

"I miss home too," I said softly. "My sister Margo is probably crying every night without me there. But there's really no sense saying things like not wanting to go to the arena. Nobody wants to go to the arena. But we have to anyway, so you may as well think about it as something that needs to be done, like chores or eating when you've got no appetite for sickness. Who knows, maybe you can win."

Prissy shook her head.

"Come on," I said kindly, "you got a pretty good score. Why are you being so down on yourself?"

In reality, I didn't think she had much of a chance of winning, either, but she would likely outlive me, and it was nice to think that maybe someone from Twelve could win. I'd probably die without knowing the difference.

"I don't think I could kill somebody," she whimpered. "Even if it was to save my own life, I don't think I have it in me. I'm baffled at my score, Maysilee. I should have gotten a one, at best. I'm terrified."

I consoled her, told her that the fear was only natural, but I had to agree with her that the thought of having to kill someone, of having my life constantly in danger… It wasn't something I could fully wrap my brain around. I bit my lip and comforted her as best I could until we decided that we really ought to get some sleep and we said our goodnights and went off to our own rooms.

Once more I found myself staring at the wall, desperate for sleep that seemed like it would never come. I groaned in frustration, turning and tossing, trying to get in a position conducive to sleeping. But how do you sleep when you know you're about to die?

I must have slept a bit, though, because I certainly woke up in the morning, changed into some clothes, met my stylist on the roof where we were picked up by a hovercraft. A woman injected something into my arm, told me it was my tracker for when I was in the arena, and then I sat there with Treasure, wringing my hands, ignoring the pain of the newly implanted technology that was another reminder that all of the nation would be watching.

When we were taken to the room where I would be launched into the arena from, Treasure dressed me up in clothes I hardly even noticed, saying comforting, gentle words I hardly listened to, and reminded me not to spend too much time trying to get supplies. The sooner I got out of the bloodbath the better, considering my low training score. I would be an easy target, there was no sense in standing still and letting them hit me.

I nodded, and then the signal for twenty seconds to launching came and I climbed onto the disc.

"Sixty seconds," she reminded me.

As if I could have forgotten. If I didn't stay on my disc for a full sixty seconds, I would be obliterated by the mines around my stand. The mines would be disengaged after sixty seconds, at the sound of the gong, but there was an occasional tribute either too anxious or nervous or spooked to restrain themselves the full sixty seconds and every-so-often the audience got to see an explosion right at the beginning of the Games.

I couldn't say that wouldn't happen this year, especially with so many jumpy twelve-year-olds, but I swore to myself it wouldn't be me. Even if it meant having to claw my way out of the bloodbath, I would not move a muscle until the gong sounded for the beginning of the Games.

In a moment I was moving up on my disc and I knew I would be in the arena any second. My fingernails dug into my palms as I tried not to shake. As I had told Prissy the night before, the fear was natural. We were all afraid. But I couldn't let my fear get the better of me.

And then I was there, in the arena. I could smell the sweat already pouring off my body as I looked around and was stunned by what I saw. It was the most beautiful place in the world, surely, with a snow-capped mountain, a beautiful forest and crystalline water cascading along. Sometimes the arenas were very nice, sometimes they were harsh and rugged, sometimes they were purely functional, but this was probably the most beautiful arena that had ever been created.

And beauty could be incredibly deadly, I realized. It was distracting. It was a weakness. It would not be my weakness, remembering Haymitch's words. I wouldn't trust anything until someone else had tested it out first. Nothing could be trusted but those packs until someone else proved otherwise.

Haymitch…

I could see him, face hard and ready as the sixty seconds were counting down. He didn't have allies either. There were a few alliances already, of course. The Careers. District Seven. Districts Six and Five. Fletcher, Rebeckah, and Rosanna of Eight. For some reason, it had never come up between the District Twelve tributes to band together, maybe because none of us wanted to hinder the others. Prissy, Haymitch, they actually had a chance of making it out alive. I didn't have a prayer.

And then the sixty seconds were over and hell began.


	5. Let The Games Begin: Haymitch

**A/N: Haymitch's POV**

As soon as the gong sounded I grab a pack and a knife and I head for the woods. As I was leaving the scene, most of the other tributes had started moving, initially too stunned by the pretty scenery to act. I just saw Hayley getting sliced in half by Brad – one of the boys from District One – with a sword as I reached the trees. The cannons wouldn't begin for a while. I just had to get as far from the Cornucopia as possible, figure out what was in my pack, and work from there.

When the cannon finally began to sound, I was quite a ways away from the Cornucopia and I paused behind a tree to rest, pulling my pack in front of me and counting eighteen blasts of the cannon. Eighteen tributes dead and the first of them all was twelve-year-old Hayley. I wondered as I opened my pack if Hadley had died as well, or if she had managed to escape with better fortune than her twin. Surely she had seen her twin's death. Hadley had had the potential to be a contender, but the death of her sister would have been traumatic enough to unhinge her, if she were like most people. Not to mention watching her twin getting sliced in half…

I opened the pack and looked inside. A water container that would hardly survive the conditions, but it had about a quart of water in it, so I didn't have to use the stream just yet. Some strips of beef and a few pieces of fruit.

But there was fruit everywhere….

Did this mean that they were preparing for people who might not be able to get food for some reason like injury, or was there something wrong with the food growing in the arena?

To be safe I decided not to eat anything but what was in my pack until I knew for sure. I frowned as I counted it out, trying to decide how little I could get away with eating in one day without putting myself at risk in battle, should I have to participate in some sort of combat. If I got my way I would continue onward away from the Cornucopia until… until I couldn't go anymore, whatever that would mean. With a quick internal calculation, I also began to wonder if Aina would get me any sponsors. I had gotten the highest training score and I was certain that I had impressed many at the interview. Surely she had to think that I had promise. I wasn't unattractive.

The problem was that even if she was trying for me and not one of the others, there was no guarantee she would be able to get me any. After all, District Twelve was always a long shot. Aina knew that better than anyone, our single victor in fifty years of Games. Even the ones who got descent scores were rarely looked at as contenders because they were from District Twelve. There was such large Career Pack and so many tributes from each District that I couldn't even expect much from even my District. If they raised a bunch of money for a tribute, assuming we all survived the bloodbath, they'd give it to someone they could relate to… probably Maysilee or Prissy.

I sighed, trying to decide what sort of shelter I would be able to find, if I would be able to find any. The trees were descent shelter enough, but not sturdy enough for me to climb high enough to be reasonably safe. There were no caves, as there would have been in the mountains. But for some reason it felt important to reach the end of the arena, whatever was at the end of the arena. So I would have to make do with the shelter of the trees.

After I had set up camp in some lush bushes for the night I heard the anthem and looked up at the faces being projected onto the sky.

There was a girl from District Two first, as well as the twelve-year-old boy from that District. One of the girls from Three, and one of the boys. The older girl from Five, the boy with the higher training score from Five (although only by a point), Hayley but not Hadley, both girls and the older boy from Seven, Rosanna from Eight, both girls and the younger boy from Nine, the older girl and older boy from Ten, the eighteen-year-old girl from Eleven, and then I held my breath. That meant one of the District Twelve children was dead, but which one?

Prissy. Prissy's face stared down at me from the sky and I wasn't sure whether to breathe a sigh of relief or feel sad.

Salli would be sad, sitting with Peggie in a little room in one of their homes, crying together. Although probably relieved that I hadn't had to kill her, but there was still quite a bit of crying going on at home.

But that was one District Twelve death I wouldn't be responsible for and that was a relief. I readjusted, considered my pack for a few moments, and then tried to drift off to sleep, knowing that if I didn't get any rest it would be difficult, if not impossible, to fight properly or even travel very far come the morning.

And yet I could not sleep. Nothing could erase from my mind the sight of Hayley being chopped in half. Clean in half, in a single stroke. She would have felt pain, though, as she died. I wonder how many of the deaths of the day had felt pain, figuring that it was probably quite a lot of them. I wondered if I would feel pain, when it was my time to go.

I looked up at the eerie sky of sorts that I knew was the top of the arena. Where was I, really? What was on the other side?

The following morning I made my way through the forest, and I managed to stay out of sight of others as I went, but that didn't mean I didn't see them.

For example, early in the morning I saw Tomi taking fruit from one of the trees and eating it. He was dead very quickly. Poison.

Later in the afternoon I saw Topher, one of the boys from District Three, drink from the stream. Less than a minute later, he was dead. Poison.

Late that evening I happened across the camp of Rebeckah and Fletcher, and I stayed crouched in the bushes as she shook his twitching form.

"What did you eat?" she cried, obviously not thinking of the danger of Careers. "What did you eat?"

"Nothing," he hissed, twitching and even coughing up a bit of blood. "I just… just smelled the… the flower."

I watched her sobbing over his twitching body as the life left it, probably despairing. The cannon went off about five minutes later and both of us moved on, Rebeckah still not aware of my presence.

Poison.

Everything in the whole arena was poisoned except what we'd gotten in our packs, what we might get as sponsor gifts, and rainwater, if the Gamemakers would be willing to send us any.

I set about deciding how to ration my food, the meager amount I had in my pack, just in case it had to last me long enough to outlast the rest of the tributes. The water as well, had to be carefully rationed, perhaps even more carefully. That night I shivered, looking up at the sky to see the faces of the night.

There was the anthem, announcing who was dead, but I already knew: there had only been three cannons that day, and I had seen three deaths in my journey away from the Cornucopia.

The following morning I ate a tiny strip of beef and drank a swallow of water. I could have some fruit later in the day, but the water would have to last me the rest of the day. I wondered how much camera time I had gotten, just a lone tribute wandering along by himself. I hadn't even been attacked by anything yet.

But that thought had come too soon. I was making my way through the forest, still yet to come across any human life. That's not to say I hadn't seen any life, however. In fact, before midday I was attacked by a pack of carnivorous squirrels.

Squirrels.

The first time I had to defend myself and it was against a pack of fluffy, golden squirrels, which happen to be one of Salli's favorite animals. The irony was maddening as I killed the last of the pack, thankful that the injuries I sustained were minimal and treatable, although I tried to wash them with my saliva, rather than the water in my pack, knowing I couldn't use river water and that if I used the water I already had I wouldn't likely make it to the end without sponsor gifts that may never come.

As I was nursing my wounds, spitting, wiping, and binding with strips of fabric I'd torn off my sleeves and pant legs, I heard two cannons go off in quick succession. I looked around, curious to know if someone was near me, particularly someone with the skill to kill someone else… Of course, it could be more poison, but it wasn't safe to assume that.

About halfway between myself and the Cornucopia, a hovercraft scooped up two bodies I couldn't make out from that distance.

"Twenty-three dead," I said to myself softly. "Almost halfway there."

I knew, though, that being almost half done after just a few days wasn't uncommon, and that once there were less people it became a much slower process. The stronger and more cunning tributes were still alive, they were more spread out, and the Career pack would start to have their own drama. It might even be days at a time without any deaths as we all slowly wasted away from defending ourselves from the surroundings, each other, and from thirst and hunger. It could still be weeks away from ending.

As I settled in for the night, I saw the figure of Maysilee stumbling across the line I was traveling away from the Cornucopia. She climbed a nearby tree and I had half a mind to make myself visible to her, but I saw her doing something with a set of blow darts and thought better of it. I wasn't keen on getting killed because I startled her.

Besides, neither of us really wanted allies, anyway. It had been a stupid idea.

I ate a bit of fruit, which made not taking any water that night feel a bit better. I was almost dozing off when I heard the anthem and looked up at the sky to see who was dead.

Marvin, a boy from Five, and Royal, a boy from Six. The two Districts had allied with each other, all eight of them together. Either they had gone off for some reason on their own, or there was some sort of scramble and they didn't make it out, or someone picked them of the rest of the pack without killing them all, just for sport. Something about killing a pair of twelve-year-old boys for sport made me nauseous.

Knowing how close Maysilee was, I didn't bother trying to sleep. If she actually knew I was there, she might be waiting for me to doze off. If she didn't, she might find me in the morning when she was moving on her way. I wasn't prepared to take a risk like that.

I tried not to move, sure that I would make some sort of noise that would draw her attention if I attempted checking my pack. Being killed by fluffy golden squirrels would be less than ideal, but being killed by Maysilee Donner was just not going to happen.

I awoke in the morning to a violent rumbling sound. Maysilee was nowhere to be seen, so I climbed a tree and saw the strangest thing: The mountain was exploding.

I had read about something called volcanoes in school, read that they had one in District Seven that had been particularly active during the Dark Days, but I never imagined that there would be one in an arena. The Gamemakers had lulled many into feeling secure on the stone, and I was never happier with my decision to take to the forest. I didn't waste another moment once my brain realized what was happening: I ran.

As far away from the mountain as possible, into the woods, praying that whatever was coming out of the mountain wouldn't make it past the river, that I would be safe and survive through the end of the day. As long as I made it out of reach of the things coming out of the mountain, I should survive the day. Nobody would be in a state to attack someone else on a day like this.

As I ran, I wondered if the Gamemakers had planned this, or if the mountain they built the arena around had taken them by surprise. It probably didn't matter, but it was something to think about as I ran, something other than staying alive. It seemed like that was most of what I thought of anymore. Maybe it would help me stay alive, or maybe it would just be the last thing I thought of as someone's knife went through my back.

There were other tributes running through the woods too, I could hear them, but there was no point paying attention to them. They weren't trying to kill me. We were all running for our lives.

It wasn't until I heard the first blow of the cannon that I stopped running, knowing that whatever carnage had occurred at the mountain was over. I stopped right where I was and began to count the cannon fire, anxious to find out how many more people I had to outlive.

Twelve blows.

The explosion at the mountain had killed twelve people, a quarter of our original number, and just about half of what we had had left. I sank to my knees, grateful.

I only had to outlive twelve more people and I could go home.

There was no point trying to go any further after that. Nobody would be trying to kill me, and I had used up much of the energy I'd stored through the night by running. I hadn't gotten hardly any sleep, trying not to get killed by Maysilee in the middle of the night. I needed to rest.

I found myself a nice spot in some bushes, and after I was stung by a butterfly in settling down, it wasn't such a bad spot.

"Well," I said aloud to myself, "knowing what could be in that butterfly sting, it's probably best I take a day off, anyway."

Carefully, I pulled the stinger from my arm, spitting on it took keep the sting from itching. The last thing I needed was a giant, infected, swollen sting because I kept scratching it. With any luck, the saliva would also dilute whatever sort of poison or anything that might be in the stinger.

I took a bit of beef out of my pack, but as soon as I went to take a swallow of water, it began to rain. Not a little trickle or a tiny mist, but full-on downpour. Without hesitation, I took a large leaf from a nearby bush, shook it to get off any sort of debris that might linger on it, and held the leaf up so that I could allow the rainwater to run down it and into my mouth, guzzling up as much as I could, then stuffing the bit of beef into my mouth, and then guzzling down more water. It only took a bit of water to soothe my dry throat, but the rain that went along throughout the rest of the day was certainly welcome to my weary, thirsty body.

That night, the rain had died down a bit and when the anthem played to announce displaying of the dead, I had drunk more than my fill of water for some time.

I counted off who was left once they finished playing the faces: Betony, Kenzie, and Brad from One; Frazier from Two; Quincey from Four; the younger boy from Seven; Rebeckah from Eight; the older boy from Nine; the younger girl from Ten; the younger boy from Eleven; and Maysilee and me. District One still stood a solid chance of winning, but ironically the odds said that District Twelve had the next best shot.

Few could have guessed, going into the Quarter Quell, that District Twelve would have a contender, but certainly all the nation was stunned as I was that we had not one but two contenders still in the Games. Aina was probably staring at the screen, dumbfounded, if she wasn't off being interviewed somewhere. Perhaps she would get sponsors for us, or one of us. Would it be me or Maysilee? Or were we still too much of long shots to get any sort of monetary support?

After all, we were only four days in, and there was so very long to go.

With careful, excited, and slightly trembling hands I apportioned myself the amount of fruit I had deemed necessary to eat for that night, settling down into my bush, checking on the butterfly sting, which was actually doing quite well. In the morning, I would set off away from the Cornucopia once more, hopefully not running into any of the five remaining Careers, hoping to find… whatever was at the end of the arena. I didn't quite have a picture yet of what I expected to find, but there was something out there. I was sure of it.


	6. Let's Make A Deal: Maysilee

**A/N: Maysilee's POV**

After the mountain exploded, there were thirteen of us left. I wasn't sure what else to do, so I settled up a sturdy tree and watched the Games for a day or two, hoping that some of the tougher competition would kill each other off. I had enough food that I wouldn't have to steal the food from other tributes for a few days, a least. And I didn't have to worry about poison for my darts: the stuff was everywhere.

Killing Marvin and Royal had been a difficult decision, but they were alone and I needed the food. If they hadn't been wandering away from the group to scout out other tributes, I likely wouldn't have bothered trying to kill them, but since they wandered so willingly into my path, who was I to refuse the opportunity?

As I sat in my tree, well out of view from the people who might wander below me, I saw Weston from District Eleven moving below me. He was by himself, I realized, and I poised myself, ready to take him down with one of my poison darts and scurry down the tree to take the food from his pack. Before I had a chance, three Careers came banging through the woods toward where he was and I curled up in my place, making sure they couldn't see me.

"Well, well, well, what have we here," rasped Quincey. "Looks like a little lost tribute. Maybe you need a hand."

Kenzie giggled, but it wasn't the same sycophantic giggle she'd had whilst training in the Capitol. It sounded half crazed. Perhaps they had run from the mountain, perhaps they had seen their companions getting killed. Or maybe she had just been a few kill short of crazy to begin with. That happened sometimes, in the Games.

"Please," Weston gasped. "Please."

Quincey looked especially small around the others, who were all at least three years older than him, but he had a fierce expression that I wouldn't have wanted to come face-to-face with. I bit my lip, determined to stay silent as they pulled out their weapons. Weston backed up, tripped, and began to scramble backwards with his belly up, completely vulnerable. Kenzie continued to giggle as Frazier took care of him.

Cannon.

Twelve left.

Thankfully, they didn't stick around once they'd killed Weston, so I curled up in my tree, watched the hovercraft carry his body away, and lamented that I hadn't gotten a chance to sift through his pack for food before they took it with them.

The trickiest part about staying in the tree was the lack of energy I had left from having to ration my food so carefully. Being killed by another tribute I could handle, but I didn't think I could live with the shame of dying of hunger or thirst. The rain had been a blessing, but if they only let it rain every few days, I would need to find an alternative water source. I was nearly out of what was in the pack I stole from Royal's dead body.

I managed to stay up there, though, and I waited for more cannons that didn't come. Nobody else died that day, so when the anthem played and they put Weston's face in the sky, I didn't bother looking. I had seen his face for the last time. If I won, I would have to watch him die again as I watched the replay of the Games, but otherwise I would die never seeing his face again, and that was fine. I had seen it in its last moments of life, contorted in fear and pain as he tried in vain to scuttle away from his predators.

I wondered what it would look like when I died, what look would be on my face. I hoped, for the sake of my sister and parents, that there would be no fear in my eyes, that I would not be scuttling away from my enemy, cringing away from a child at least three years my junior. For it could very well be that twelve-year-old Hadley would be the one to track me down and kill me.

Was there such a thing as a dignified death? Perhaps out in the world, when people sometimes lived so long that they just died in their sleep, quietly, painlessly, without regrets and surrounded by their loved ones. It wasn't incredibly common, but I knew it happened. But I didn't think there was any such thing as a dignified death in the Hunger Games, in the arena. Some deaths were worse than others. Getting exploded by the mines around the starting circles would be a particularly embarrassing death, but it would probably be quick and painless. I wondered if I would have the luck of a painless death.

Probably not.

Very few arena deaths were painless, especially thus far into the competition. Fewer and fewer tributes would be killed by fellow tributes and more and more would be killed by the arena, crushing rocks, vicious mutations, poison, hunger, thirst, disease, infection… The deaths became more spread out over time as fewer of us survived, and the Gamemakers brought on non-tribute dangers to keep the audience from growing bored and to keep us from growing idle. As if there were any way to be idle in the Hunger Games. Even sleep could never be easy. There were too many ways to die.

I shivered a little bit, not from the cold. With any luck, my death would be something simple, not particularly gruesome… something that wouldn't haunt my sister at night. I wondered vaguely if Haymitch had gotten any sponsor gifts yet, or if felt as alone as I did. If anyone was going to have sponsors from District Twelve, it was him. It had always been him. The highest training score, the most personality, the best looks… And he knew it would break Salli's heart if he didn't come home, and that was certainly something to fight for.

I tried hard not to feel bitter about that, knowing there was no reason for me to do so, but the images of him and Salli in the woods came to the forefront of my mind and kept me from sleeping very soundly.

The following day, I moved just a little bit, just far enough to see where the Careers were, keep them on my radar so I wasn't caught off guard by their presence. I wanted to be on the offensive, not the defensive, should they realize I was in their vicinity.

"Why are we chasing a District Twelve brat, anyway?" Kenzie simpered. "Shouldn't we be focusing on the girl from Eight?"

"Brad and Betony are tracking her," Quincey said, bored. "She'll be dead soon enough."

District Twelve? Were they actually looking for me? After all, if they were tracking me, they'd done a good job. They were camping right underneath me. Although, they hadn't seemed to realize I was above them, if that were the case…

"But she had a higher score than he did," Kenzie whined. "I mean, shouldn't we have sent you with them or me or something so we had three on the more dangerous opponent?"

"Rebeckah was more dangerous when she had her allies," Frazier said calmly. "She's despairing and put off by the early loss of her allies. Haymitch had arrogance and solidarity down to an art from the beginning. It's going to take more than a few deaths to shake him, because there's nobody he's close to."

Haymitch. They were tracking Haymitch. I couldn't say how good of a job they'd done of that, seeing as I hadn't seen him since the Cornucopia.

But of course they weren't looking for me. I would be an easy kill, with a training score of two. Why should they hunt me down?

Three against one, though, I didn't think Haymitch stood a chance. I resigned myself to follow them when they set out to find him again, knowing that they still weren't aware of my presence. If they were trying to kill Haymitch, maybe there was something I could do to make sure he was okay.

But I shouldn't have cared. I should have just wanted to let them go on with their plan, with their mission. One less person between me and home. But I couldn't, even though Haymitch had never shown me a moment's kindness, because he was home. He was the only piece of home I had left, and I refused to let his death be caused by any action or lack of action on my part.

A cannon sounded toward the Cornucopia. Whoever died, whatever killed them, it was reasonably far away.

"Do you think that's Betony and Brad killing Rebeckah?" Kenzie said softly.

"Could be," Frazier said with a shrug. "It could also be them killing someone else, or Rebeckah killing someone else, or the arena killing someone else, or someone else killing someone else. The only thing we know for sure is Haymitch and us weren't involved."

I couldn't see Kenzie's face, but it didn't take too much imagination to envision her pouting or screwing up her face in childish contempt of Frazier, who was very clearly in charge of the group.

In a way, I liked Frazier. He was a quieter sort of Career, not taking part in the childish, brutish attempts during training to intimidate the other tributes. As an eighteen-year-old with only a seven as his training score, he wasn't the most impressive of tributes. Haymitch had gotten a seven, and he hadn't been training all his life. He certainly wasn't a favorite to win, but good fortune had gotten him thus far.

But I knew that Kenzie and Quincey were both itching to stuck a knife in his back the second he was no longer useful to them. Indeed, as soon as Frazier was dead, Kenzie would probably be in charge, and that was a sickening thought.

He must have had a good mind for strategy, or one of them would have either killed or usurped him by this point. Of course, sending two of the younger tributes off to get Rebeckah might have seemed like a silly thing to many people watching, but he was keeping his eye on Kenzie, not letting her gather a following and usurp him. He could trust Betony and Brad, it seemed. And despite her sickening persona, probably part of her Games strategy, Kenzie was not stupid. She knew exactly why Frazier wasn't letting her out of his sight, and was probably plotting to make his death look like an accident even as she pretended to go along.

In a way, I was glad not to have allies. The politics would have driven me mad before the Games even started.

Knowing that in the morning the would be going straight for Haymitch, I readied my darts as the sky darkened, preparing my poisons, not sure if I would need them, or if I would even have an opportunity to use them. My aim was very good, but I wasn't sure if I would have the confidence if someone was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Haymitch not to miss and hit the wrong person. Nothing scared me more than somehow being responsible for Haymitch's death, whether I won or lost, myself.

I was just settling in properly for the night when the anthem sounded. I held my breath and watched as the face of Angus, the young boy from District Seven, was flashed in the sky, followed by the Capitol Seal. I bit my lip to hold in the tears, recalling Hayley being sliced in two on the first day…

"How many midgets does that leave?" Kenzie asked.

"Just the other twin," Quincey said softly. "Everybody else that's left is at least fourteen."

"Nobody under fifteen has ever one," Kenzie said, obviously meaning to take a jab at Quincey, who was fourteen, but I wondered if there was any way Hadley would be able to win. Being a twin myself, I thought her sister would have liked to see her win. I certainly liked the thought of her being the first twelve-year-old victor.

The following day, I followed the Careers on their journey, but nothing happened on that seventh day of the Games. The day after, however, many things happened. I watched the Careers take down their camp rather carelessly, knowing they didn't mind someone else finding them. There was no need for them to be stealthy, barraging off through the woods, apparently tracking Haymitch. I carefully packed up my small belongings, darts at the ready and already dipped in poison, following in the trees.

It didn't take them long to find Haymitch. Whatever they were doing to track him, they'd done a good job. I'd never actually tracked anything in my life, so I wasn't sure exactly how it was done, but they found him, so they did something right.

He wasn't entirely taken by surprise at their presence, however, and although he found himself surrounded, he seemed quite mentally prepared to take them on. I stayed in my tree, well out of their sight, but certainly close enough to shoot them with darts, if I had to.

Quincey went at him first, probably as a part of some sort of pre-arrangement they had made when deciding how they would attack him. I watched in awe, feeling a little bit of jealousy creep into me as I saw the grace and intelligence with which Haymitch fought his hand-to-hand combat, anticipating the moves of his enemy and compensating. It seemed he had paid quite good attention to the habits and styles of the Careers while we were in training, and he knew almost every move Quincey made before he actually made them. It wasn't hard, then, for Haymitch to kill Quincey, slitting his throat and tossing the body off to the side as the cannon sounded.

Kenzie charged him next, the battle raging for much longer, the two of them so engaged in their combat that I doubt either of them noticed Frazier poising himself, readying to attack Haymitch from behind and catch him off guard, should Kenzie fail. They didn't notice, but I did, and my darts were ready in case he made any sudden moves.

I could see blood coming from the struggle, but in the tangle it could have belonged to either of them, or both of them, co-mingling together. When the cannon sounded, it took me a moment to realize it was Kenzie that was dead. Thankfully, it took Frazier a moment as well, because otherwise, by the time he turned around, Haymitch would have been already dead. He almost had been, Frazier's knife at his throat, but my blow dart found its target.

Haymitch watched his body fall, heard the cannon go off, and began to look around for the person who'd killed his assailant. Knowing he wouldn't likely kill me after I just saved his life, I slid out of the tree, walking towards him.

If he was surprised to see me, he didn't show it.

"We'd live longer with two of us," I said.

"Guess you just proved that," he conceded, rubbing his neck absently where Frazier's knife had been. "Allies?"

How could I do anything but agree? After all, I'd suggested it in the first place, and saved his life, and made this whole thing necessary, if not possible. I think we were both keenly, acutely aware of what was going on outside the arena at that point.

With the killing of those three Careers, there were only seven tributes left alive. Interviews of family and friends began when they got to the last eight. Outside the arena, someone was in District Twelve interviewing our families, Lavender, Salli… all of the people closest to us. They were getting information for the nation about our character, what we liked to eat, how we passed the time back home, and now what they thought of the two of us as allies.

"So, other than today," I said softly, "Have you killed anybody yet?"

"No," he responded, eyeing my pack. "I've been trying to stay away from others as much as possible. I saw you a few days ago… Before the mountain blew. You were in a tree."

"I've spent a lot of time in trees," I said with a shrug. "Keeps me out of sight of most people. I didn't see you."

"I was in a bush," he replied, sitting down, motioning for me to join him on the ground. "I've spent a lot of time in bushes. Keeps me out of sight of most people. What about you, sweetheart? You come across any trouble before you ran into me?"

"Marvin and Royal were me," I admitted. "They had packs, and I knew I was going to need more food. I had the darts, and there's lots of poison. You've seen my aim. It's pretty good."

"Incredible, actually," he said with a nod. "How did you only get a two as your training score?"

"I tried throwing knives," I admitted, looking up at the sky. "My eyesight and aim are very good, but my throwing is atrocious. It was my only hope, really. You're pretty handy with a knife."

"Thanks," Haymitch said with a shrug. "Just thinking fast."

With a sigh, he looked down at the packs.

"We'll have to decide how to divide up the food," he said. "I've been having beef in the morning and fruit at night, a swallow of water with the beef, and when they gave us rain, I drank as much as I could hold."

I blinked.

"You have fruit and water?" I whispered.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "You don't?"

"No," I said softly. "Just strips of beef. It was all they had, too, but it's kept me going thus far."

"We'll share," he said slowly. "We'd better get moving before someone else comes along."

And so we set off in the direction he indicated, away from the Cornucopia, toward what, I couldn't say.


	7. Growing Attachment: Haymitch

**A/N: Haymitch's POV**

"I followed those Careers for a few days," Maysilee told me.

"Why?" I asked. "They could have found you and killed you. Wouldn't it have made more sense to go the other way?"

She shrugged.

"I knew they were tracking you, and I couldn't let them kill you. Your death would have been on my conscience, and if I had gone home after letting them kill you… that's a pretty heavy burden. I never would have been able to look Salli in the eye again."

I frowned. Prissy would have done the same thing, for Salli, if she'd been able to, but Salli was friends with her sister. Maysilee had no connection to Salli. She wasn't doing it for her, she was doing it for me, but why?

"What did you learn while you followed them?" I asked.

"Other than that they were after you?" she asked. "Brad and Betony from One are teamed up, tracking Rebeckah. They might have been responsible for Angus the other day. I saw Frazier kill Weston."

"What, no saving him?" I teased.

She shook her head.

"He had a pack," Maysilee said thoughtfully. "If the Careers hadn't shown up, I was getting ready to kill him myself."

"So no sponsor gifts from Aina?" I asked, genuinely curious.

Maysilee shook her head and asked, "None for you, either?"

"Nope," I replied, looking over my shoulder to check visually our distance from the mountain. "Not that I'm too surprised, you know. If I were a sponsor, I wouldn't put my money on District Twelve, either."

"I think she wanted Prissy," Maysilee reasoned. "I think she was working toward getting Prissy sponsors, and once she died she had to reevaluate. I don't think she liked you very much, and I think my training score made me a bit too hard of a sell."

"True," I said with a chuckle. "I'm not particularly lovable, am I?"

Maysilee hesitated quite a while before answering, more than the amount it would have taken such a well-bred girl to think of a suitable, polite response… There was something else going on in her brain, whatever it was, but she finally said, "Well, I don't think Salli would agree with that, but she's probably in the minority."

Not really wanting to know what had caused her hesitation, I let it go at that, and the conversation was more easily dropped when rain began to pour very suddenly from the arena sky.

"Quick," I demanded, "leaves."

I pulled her into some bushes that would hide us fairly well, grabbed some of the large leaves I'd used during the last rainfall, and showed her how to hold them to get the best amount of water. We guzzled down as much as we could, and we were just starting to fill up a bit when the clouds were clearing.

"It'll be night soon," she commented. "Do you want to keep going, or would you rather stay here?"

"This place is as good as any," I said. "At least we know these bushes will hide us. We can't be assured of a better place further on."

She nodded, shivering slightly in the damp clothes, but there was nothing else for her to wear.

When the night grew dark enough, we heard the anthem and the faces of our three Career kills lit up on the dome of the arena, looking down smugly as they had in life, even in their final moments. Except for Frazier. He never looked smug, and so knowing that he'd been the one who'd almost killed me grated a bit. I had been foolish enough to underestimate him. I hoped it wouldn't happen again.

"Haymitch?" Maysilee whispered.

"What?"

"Where do you think we actually are?"

I looked up at the top of the arena that looked like sky.

"Difficult to say," I sighed. "Could be near Seven. Maybe Six. Maybe somewhere completely random and they just built the arena to suit their fancy, not based on where they were. That seems more likely."

"Oh. Do you think we'll have to kill anyone else?"

"If we want to win?" I scrunched up a corner of my jacket in my hand, squeezing out the water that had soaked it. "Yeah, probably at least one more."

Maybe even each other.

"I can kill someone if we need food, too," Maysilee whispered. "If we see someone with a pack. We can't count on Aina getting us other food."

"Yeah, and we can count on running into someone else with food," I reasoned. "We'll have to assume it's not possible and be pleasantly surprised if we do run across someone with supplies. I won't object if you down someone with a dart and they've got beef in their bag."

"I didn't think you would," she said, smile in her voice. "You're not stupid."

"I know," I said. "How long until they get Rebeckah, do you think?"

"Betony's sharp," she said. "I watched her a lot during training. She's probably nearly found her by now. The question is will they be able to kill her? She's got quite a high score."

I shook my head.

"You didn't see her when Fletcher died," I whispered. "She was absolutely distraught. Unless she managed to put that aside, I don't see how she's got a prayer against two highly trained Careers. They might be small ones, but still."

"I suppose," Maysilee said softly, "we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

"I suppose we will."

I sat up a bit longer that she did, watching her sleep, knowing that someone needed to keep an eye out for Careers or other tributes, as long as there were two of us. The bush we were hiding in was good cover, but I knew Hadley, for one, had sharp eyes and I had no hesitation in my mind as to whether or not she would have the heart to kill us. After what happened to her sister, I was fairly certain she wouldn't have hesitated to kill anyone in her path.

The morning of the ninth day, I woke Maysilee, handed her a bit of beef and let her have a small drink of water.

"That's going to have to last until tonight," I said firmly. "Even if you get hungry, that's all you get. We can't afford to run out of food."

"Of course," she said softly, eating the beef slowly to trick herself into thinking she was eating more than she actually was. I did the same.

"Come on," I said.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"This way," I said, pointing in the direction I had been travelling, away from the Cornucopia.

"What's that way?" she said.

"I don't know. But the main area isn't there, and that's something."

She didn't argue and we began to walk, away from the Cornucopia, away from the middle of the arena, away from the exploded mountain. There was an edge of the arena somewhere, I was almost certain of it. I just had to find it, and there might be something I could use… a weapon or a tool or a source of food or water… something. Something I could use to stay alive.

We walked most of the morning, stopping only for a few minutes for Maysilee to catch her breath. I hadn't thought of myself as particularly fast, but I was fairly certain she hadn't been quite as well in shape as I was before going into the arena, and her lack of steady, carefully portioned food. I didn't let her rest too long, though. I wasn't sure how large arenas usually were, but I was bound to reach the edge sooner or later, and I'd rather it be sooner rather than later. I already was moving slower than I would have liked due to my physical deterioration from lack of sufficient food.

Around midday, Maysilee insisted that we slow, and I found myself having to agree with her. We began traveling at half our original pace. We went for about another hour when there was the sound of a cannon and hovercraft came much closer to our position than I would have guessed.

"Rebeckah?" she asked, nervously.

I shrugged.

"Maybe," I said. "Probably. But it could be anyone. We just know it's not us, and that's the most important part."

I was fairly certain that it was either Rebeckah or one of her attackers, but I didn't say so out loud in case I was wrong.

But we kept on walking, well into the night, until it became too dark and I start to trip over tree roots I couldn't see and Maysilee spotted a nice set of bushes for us to sleep in. I used my knife to cut us some bits of fruit.

"Thanks," she said as she took her piece, but it was nearly covered by the sound of the anthem overhead, signaling the showing of the face of whoever had died.

It was Rebeckah.

"Betony, Brad," I whispered, "Hadley, Laura, Duilius, Maysilee, me."

"Seven of us left," she whispered back. "Who do you think they're interviewing right now?"

"Probably your twin," I answered hollowly, "and Lavender. Maybe Salli. They like the pretty young girls, when they can get them. Maybe they're interviewing Io, too."

There was silence for a moment and I wondered if I had said something to upset Maysilee, but instead she finally said, "I don't think I've met Io. I've seen her in town when your brother trades to buy her sweets, but we've never been introduced, of course."

"She's a sweetheart," I said simply.

It felt odd, somehow, to talk about Io and home and everything to do with my previous life, especially with Maysilee. Maybe the audience would like a conversation where they saw the raw, heart-felt emotions of Haymitch Abernathy, but that was too bad. I wasn't willing to give them all of that. Maysilee could gush about home all she wanted, as long as I didn't have to participate in it.

"We ought to do a watch tonight," I said shortly. "I stayed up most of the night last night, but with two of us there's no reason we should have one of us awake at all times."

"Of course," she said at once. "I'm sorry you didn't get much sleep last night. I should have thought of that, too."

"Don't worry about it," I said gruffly, waving off her apology.

"I'll take the first watch," she said earnestly. "You must be exhausted."

I was, but I didn't want her to know it, just in case we did have to be enemies sooner rather than later…

"No, I can go quite a while without much sleep," I lied. "But if you'd like first watch, I suppose it would be stupid of me to argue."

It was difficult to get to sleep in spite of how tired I was. It wasn't that I didn't trust Maysilee, it was that I had become so paranoid from my short time in the arena that I absolutely needed to know what was going on at all times. It was all I could do not to sleep grasping my knife for fear that I might stab her as she tried to wake me. Stabbing allies, whatever the reason, was not an advisable strategy, and I knew it would win me no extra love back home.

I did eventually fall asleep, though, because Maysilee certainly woke me for my part of the watch. How long I had actually managed to sleep for, though, was not clear, as I didn't feel rested at all, and I almost thought she'd woken me up as soon as I'd closed my eyes.

Sitting up the rest of the night, watching her sleep, I noticed that Maysilee looked something like an angel when she was sleeping. Her blonde hair framed her peaceful, gentle face in golden strands like beams of light. Even in the near-darkness, I could see that even the emaciation from the Games hadn't marred her pretty looks.

The next morning we walked, ate, walked, drank water, and walked some more. We paused for a short while in the afternoon for our weariness, but then went back on our way, walking ever away from the Cornucopia, into the unknown, and eating a little bit of fruit before we turned in to the best bush we could find for the night.

Nobody died on the tenth day.

We split the watch again, me going first that time. I watched her sleep once more, trying not to think about how in the darkness I could almost tell myself it was Salli I was watching over.

The following morning we continued our almost monotonous cycle. I portioned the beef and water and we walked as long as we could until about midday when I stopped to allow about a quarter of an hour of rest before continuing on our way. When we reached another good stopping spot for the night, we curled up in our bush and I portioned the fruit.

Nobody died the eleventh day, and furthermore it did not rain. It hadn't rained since we'd killed the three Careers.

We settled in for another night, Maysilee taking the first watch. I found I preferred taking the first watch, and although I knew she would have had no objection to setting the schedule that way every night if I had brought it up, I made a point of not mentioning my preference. It wouldn't have been right for me to have what I wanted every night while Maysilee always got woken up in the middle of the night. She was a positive person, of course, and would no doubt find some way to justify that it was all her pleasure entirely, but I knew it wasn't fair and thereby couldn't bring myself to mention it.

The morning of the twelfth day, I was awakened by the sounds of screams. At first, I thought they were Maysilee, as they were eerily close, but when I sat straight up, fumbling for my knife, I saw Maysilee sitting there, looking around wildly for the source of the noise.

And then we heard a cannon.

And then we saw a hovercraft carrying out a body.

"Betony, Hadley, or Laura," I whispered, shivering a little bit in spite of myself. "The boys couldn't have made a scream like that."

"So then there's six of us," Maysilee said. "I don't like how close that was."

"Nor do I," I admitted. "The Gamemakers are probably putting us closer together so they can have a better show when it's time to end it."

"We've almost reached two weeks," she said reasonably. "I mean, it could be any day now, but we could still go another week. There's still plenty of us left."

I frowned handing her a portion of beef.

"I expect they want this over sooner, rather than later. There's already been quite a lot of bloodshed."

"Never enough bloodshed," Maysilee said bitterly, and I knew she meant in the eyes of the Capitol. For them, there probably was never enough. "But that would explain the mountain exploding. Unless…"

She didn't have to say what she was thinking. Unless the Gamemakers hadn't planned it, hadn't accounted for it. But the arenas were controlled to the last detail by the Gamemakers. Everything is planned. At least, that was what we were led to believe, which was part of why I wanted to find the end. Somewhere, there would be something that maybe the Gamemakers hadn't thought of, and I could use it.

"So, now what do we do?" Maysilee asked, finishing her beef and taking her small swallow of water.

"We walk," I said, probably with a bit more of an air of superiority than I had intended. Apparently, it was more natural for me than I realized.

So we walked, always away from the Cornucopia, continuing on our relatively straight path into the unknown. About midday, it decided to rain. We paused then, finding suitable leaves and lapping up as much water as we could manage before it stopped again. Then we walked more.

When we settled in for the night, I apportioned more fruit and sighed.

"If we have to make it another week," I said softy, "we're going to have to eat even less."

"Maybe Aina can get us sponsors," Maysilee said hopefully. "I mean, there's only a few of us left."

"Yeah," I said. "And everything is now even more expensive than it would have been. Let's face it Maysilee, nobody's going to sponsor us. If they want to feed us, they'd have to feed two of us, and we're still not very good bets. I mean, there're still two Careers out there."

"It could have been Betony," Maysilee said in a small voice. "You said so yourself earlier."

It was true, I had said as much. And it was true, it could have been her. But in all honesty, I doubted it very much, unless she was attacked by four packs of fluffy golden squirrels at once.

When the anthem sounded that night, I found I was right: It wasn't Betony.

It was Laura.

"Betony, Brad," I whispered, "Duilius, Hadley, and us."

When I had started thinking of Maysilee and myself as an 'us' I wasn't sure, but it was a dangerous sentiment.

As I watched Maysilee sleep I saw her begin to shiver. For a moment, I just watched. Then, without really thinking about what I was doing, I pulled off my jacket and draped it over her like a blanket. It wasn't much, but it seemed to make quite a bit of difference, and she calmed back to her usual peaceful sleep soon.

If I didn't start thinking like a competitor again, I realized I might very well find myself in an unfortunate place at the end of things, either having to kill or be killed by Maysilee Donner. And if I came out on top of a battle like that, forget the rest of District Twelve, I would spend every day of the rest of my life hating myself for it.


	8. Falling Apart: Haymitch

**A/N: Haymitch's POV**

I spent much of the thirteenth day watching Maysilee as she walked in front of me. I couldn't explain it, but something about this girl had crawled up inside of me and made me care. It wasn't quite how I cared about Stella, but more like how I cared about my mother, or Io. I couldn't kill Io, or my mother, even to save my own life. So how would I be able to kill Maysilee Donner?

There wasn't much talking during the day. There was too much unspoken tension, knowing there were only six of us left, knowing we were closing in quickly on that territory of having to maybe fight each other.

"Haymitch, we're running out of food," she said that night as we split up one of our last two pieces of fruit. "Even rationing it as we are, we're going to need more."

As much as I didn't want to admit it, she was right. We wouldn't last more than three more days on our current diet. I didn't say anything for a moment, though, vainly hoping for just a split second that a silver parachute would fall out of the sky with a feast ready for us.

Unsurprisingly, nothing came.

"We'll have to eat less tomorrow, see where that leaves us," I said reasonably. "It's not like we have any other options. We can't hunt and gather, we can't go seeking out a fight, and we certainly can't expect food to start falling out of the sky."

The anthem began to play, but all that went up for the night was the seal of Panem, taunting us in the sky. Why did they keep on punishing us this way for things our ancestors had done fifty years ago? None of us were even alive. Couldn't they punish the remnant of the people who had been a part of the rebellion?

But they weren't stupid, the Capitol. The people in charge knew that the best way to keep people in line was to take away something precious, such as their children. And they had hope of keeping us, but it was a very faint, thin slice of hope indeed. It was ingenious, I had to admit, and it was also sick and maniacal and all I wanted to do was go home and play with my little sister.

The worst part was that even if I won, my siblings would still be eligible for reaping. In fact, as the twins had proved, it was sometimes even more likely for relatives of victors to be reaped, although children of victors were more common than siblings…

Children. Salli would want children, and to be honest before I'd been reaped, I would have liked them too. Now… even if I made it out alive, I would be so changed, so twisted… I wouldn't make much of a father, I was sure, and even if it turned out by some miracle that I wasn't too awful the likelihood of their ending up in the Games… Surely Salli would be able to understand that the risks were just too incredibly great. I knew Salli wanted children, but she would understand… She would have to understand.

But then a horrific thought occurred to me that made me want to give up then and there.

What if Salli didn't want me after this was all done, if I won? What if I came back alive, but so changed by the arena that she just couldn't handle being with me, or because of the fact that I'd killed someone… maybe even Maysilee.

I thought of killing Maysilee, running her through with a spear or cutting her throat while she slept. For some reason, even taking Salli out of the equation, the whole idea was repugnant to me. It brought me back to the conversation I'd had with Maysilee in the Capitol about weaknesses. Weakness for Salli, weakness for beauty…. It was apparently that I had some sort of weakness for Maysilee. She was beautiful as well, and I began to wonder if maybe I had been wrong about my weakness for beauty.

But there were a lot of beautiful girls. Kenzie certainly wasn't lacking in attractiveness, and yet I had no problem killing her. I didn't have a weakness for beauty.

I had a weakness for Salli because I loved her. Could I possibly feel even remotely similar for Maysilee? Or had my mind just latched on to her because she was the last bit of home I had left, because she saved my life? And maybe she'd saved my life for the same reason, because of that something…. It had to be because we were the last bit of home each other had.

Whatever the reasoning, I knew I would never be able to kill Maysilee Donner.

It was disconcerting, knowing there was a person in the arena I wouldn't be able to kill. Would she be able to kill me? She'd certainly proven herself more than capable of killing, already making herself more of a contender than I believed anyone but I thought she would manage to be. For a girl with such a low score, she'd killed more than probably any tribute left alive thus far in the Games. I couldn't be sure if I ought to be relieved or terrified to be allied with her.

But she'd saved my life.

Not that that meant much, I knew. I'd seen tributes turn on allies they'd saved faster than they could blink an eye. But somehow, I had to find comfort in the thought that she'd gone out of her way to save me because if I couldn't believe that she wouldn't kill me in my sleep, I was worse off than I'd been before, Frazier's knife to my throat and ready to slit it. When the sun came up on the fourteenth day, I had more or less convinced myself that Maysilee wouldn't kill me, and I was breathing a bit easier than I had been most of the night.

We continued to walk onwards, away from the Cornucopia, but I sensed that Maysilee was getting agitated with our seemingly pointless trek. But I didn't know what to say to comfort her. I couldn't even properly explain to myself what I was looking for, how was I supposed to express it to her? It had gotten past the point of just getting as far away from the mountain and Cornucopia as possible and had turned into an obsessive desire to reach whatever was at the edge of the arena.

A cannon sounded not too terribly far away and we froze, turning to watch a hovercraft lift a body out of the forest. It was terribly mauled, I supposed from the squirrels.

"Male," Maysilee said softly. "Brad or Duilius."

"Five of us left," I whispered. I was gripped with the sensation that we were truly nearing the end. "I wonder if Aina would have guessed it would come down to this."

"Somehow I doubt it," Maysilee said with a breathless laugh as we continued walking. "I mean, she probably thought you..."

"I think she would have picked you," I said firmly. "She liked you. She didn't like me. Not many people do."

Maysilee shook her head and said softly, "I do."

For some reason, I was happy that she said that, but it didn't mean that anything would be any easier. If anything, it would be more difficult for us to kill each other, when it came to it.

"We've got a ways to go," I sighed. "I don't think we should slow down. I want to put some distance between us and that kill site. I looked like an arena death, muttations, but I wouldn't put it past Betony or Brad to mutilate someone."

I saw her shiver and I almost felt bad for saying it, but it was silly to pretend we weren't all fighting for our lives. We'd lasted so long that pretending such things would only be a waste of time, putting ourselves in danger.

The death had made us move faster, speeding us across the forest so that we were far from the place the death occurred by the time we were settling in for the night.

"Here," I sighed, dividing a bit of fruit and setting up our camp in some bushes. "I'll take the first watch after the anthem."

"Are you sure?" she muttered, but I could tell she was tired, so I assured her I would. I wanted to stay up and consider what I was going to do going forward.

"Anthem," she said weakly when the Panem anthem began to play and I nodded, handing her my jacket to use as a blanket while she slept.

Duilius had been killed.

"Brad," I whispered. "Betony, Hadley, you, me. That's all that left. Would you have guessed?"

"No," Maysilee breathed back, curling up in the bush she was using as a bed. "I'd never have guessed. Especially me."

I didn't know what to say so I just watched her fall asleep.

Brad, Betony, Hadley, Maysilee. That was all I had to outlast and then I could go home. I didn't want to kill Hadley and I had come to the conclusion that I absolutely would not be able to kill Maysilee. It was especially clear to me as I watched her sleep that in doing so I wouldn't be able to live with myself. If it came down to the two of us, the Gamemakers would probably have to find some way to kill off one of us without one-on-one combat, either with mutts or the arena in some other way, and yet keep the other. They'd probably separate us, if we didn't separate before that...

But I didn't want to think about it.

Brad and Betony would be a challenge, both well-trained Career tributes, knowing the ins and outs of combat better than they knew just about anything else. It was a wonder to me that the Career Districts even had products to turn out with how much focus they put on training people for the Games, but I supposed they probably learned about industry and practiced for their Careers at school or something, like we did with the coal mines.

Betony was the one who really concerned me. I had a feeling Brad would underestimate her, that she could finish him off with ease, but I also had a feeling that it would be even more tempting to underestimate her than Hadley, who had so many reasons to be a contender from her mother to the death of her sister. Betony was a more obvious choice, and thereby more easily taken for granted. I didn't want to be the one taking someone for granted and getting an ax in my neck for the mistake.

Maysilee shifted in her sleep. I could see she was frowning and I wondered if she wasn't thinking about the same sorts of things in her dreams, of who she might be able to kill and who might be killing her soon. The one thing I was certain of was that she wouldn't kill me, although exactly why I was sure of this I didn't know. I wondered if she knew that I wouldn't kill her. I hoped she did. I hope she understood how difficult it would be if it came down to the two of us.

When it was time to wake her, I was hesitant. She didn't look as though she was sleeping peacefully, but it would only get worse as time went on, waiting for someone to find us and kill us both, wondering when our end would come. Still, I knew letting her sleep wouldn't do us any good if I couldn't stay awake and alert, so I woke her, curled up in the leaves, and wished her a good night as I surrendered to sleep where the dreams I would have liked to have had were replaced instead with nightmares of death and destruction.

The next few days were just walking. We kept to our routine with our breath held, hoping that we wouldn't die when we turned around. By the morning of day sixteen, I could tell Maysilee was tired of walking, as I was, but we just had to keep going.

We came across a hedge that blocked our path. Maysilee suggested going back in the other direction, but I refused. We had to keep on in our direction.

"Why?" Maysilee asked, annoyed.

"Because it has to end somewhere, right?" I sighed. "The arena can't go on forever."

"What do you expect to find?" she said softly.

"I don't know. But maybe there's something we can use."

She paced, obviously thinking hard, trying to remember something.

"Hang on," she said, "one of these packs had..."

She picked one of them up, rustled through it, and couldn't find it but when she picked up the second she pulled out a blowtorch. Worried about her burning herself, I took it out of her hand and said, "Stand back."

Maysilee nodded, moving back and I turned on the blowtorch, carefully burning my way through the massive, impenetrable hedge. It took us several hours to get through, but eventually we made it through the hedge and found ourselves at a flat, dry stretch of earth that led to a sharp drop, a ledge that had jagged, sharp rocks at the bottom of it when we looked over the edge. Maysilee frowned.

"That's all there is, Haymitch. Let's go back," she said firmly.

"No, I'm staying here," I countered. I had to figure out how to use this area to my advantage.

"All right," she said slowly, "There's only five of us left. May as well say goodbye now, anyway. I don't want to come down to you and me."

"Okay," I say, still looking down at the rocks at the bottom of the drop-off, not wanting to look at her, think about the partnership we'd built and home and everything she represented for fear that I might ask her not to leave me. But she was right. If she stayed, it would probably come down to her and I and I already knew I didn't want that. Apparently, neither did she.

I knew she walked away, back through the blowtorched part of the hedge that we'd spent so long working on, and I considered the ledge, pacing it, thinking. There had to be some way to use this ledge as a weapon, for when it came down to me and Brad, or me and Betony, as I was hoping it would. I wouldn't be able to defeat them, I was sure, unless I knew something they didn't, unless I had some secret, and that was what I had really been counting on all along, wasn't it, in finding the edge?

The problem was that the ledge was so obvious once through the hedge that they wouldn't just stumble off it dumbly and there was too much space between the hedge and the ledge for their momentum to carry them over.

I was beginning to tire from the frantic pacing and as I sat down to rest and think my foot dislodged a pebble which tumbled off the ledge, gone into the abyss, probably to break on the sharp rocks below. And yet instead, several moments later, the very same pebble zoomed right back up beside me, landing on the flat ground as if pebbles were intended to defy the laws of gravity.

There was something I vaguely remembered the Capitol escort mentioning when she found me on the roof of the building we'd trained in, something about a force field. They'd apparently put one around the roof of the building, to "keep tributes from falling off" she said, as if it were for our own good and not to keep them from losing desperate tributes who didn't want to be killed like pawns of the Capitol on television before all of Panem. If a tribute "fell", she explained, the force field would pop them right back onto the rooftop because it wasn't strong enough to do damage to them physically.

Just strong enough to keep them alive.

This force field, the one that seemed to mark the edge of the arena, might be strong enough to kill. After all, they didn't need to keep us alive in the arena, but even if it wasn't, I could still find a way to use it.

A plan began to form in my mind as I picked up a rock about as big as my fist and I tossed it off the cliff. I didn't have to wait too terribly long for it to zoom right back into my waiting hand. I began to laugh and a plan started forming in my mind.

Just then, I heard a scream, and I knew it was Maysilee.

Technically, I could have ignored it and nobody would have blamed me since she's the one who called off our alliance. It could have been my way of making sure it didn't come down to the two of us, that I wasn't the one to kill her, but it didn't feel right to stand there and almost on instinct I ran through the hedge and straight for the sound of her cries.

By the time I reached her, the last of a flock of pink birds that Io would have loved in any other circumstance was skewering Maysilee through the neck and I knew in that moment as she gripped at the dirt of the forest floor frantically that there was nothing I could do for her. So I rushed to her side, knelt beside her, and grasped her hand, hoping it would bring her just a little bit of comfort in her final moments. Her twin sister would be a mess at home. I felt like a mess, but I couldn't afford to break down.

I had to win for Maysilee.


	9. Loss: Haymitch

**A/N: The remainder of the story will obviously be in Haymitch's POV. ALSO: Big thank you to Madison, who pointed out in the last chapter that I said "Stella" in the first paragraph. Stella is from my Finnick story, one of the tributes. She is probably in womb or diapers at this point, so year, I meant Salli. Whoops. Thanks for the tip.**

** -J**

I tried not to think about Maysilee after the cannon sounded and the hovercraft took away her body. I took her pack and kept the food, knowing that so late in the Games I wasn't likely to get any sponsor gifts. They got more expensive as time went on, even a roll would be exorbitantly expensive. I couldn't afford not to take the bit of food she'd not eaten.

She was right, we'd been growing low on supplies, I thought as I went along with my feeding myself for the day.

There was a cannon that sounded, and it was remarkably close to my part of the woods. The action was finding its way toward me, I thought, realizing that the body that was being pulled into the hovercraft was that of a male.

Brad was dead.

Hadley, Betony, and me. That was all that was left, and it could be done in a matter of a few days if we were lucky. Maybe, if we got really lucky, it would be over by nightfall.

But I couldn't get my hopes up and I couldn't let my guard down.

Staying alive wasn't too difficult for a while. I was on alert, carefully waiting for any sign that someone was coming for me.

Eating. Waiting. Watching. Watching. Eating. Waiting.

Then there was another cannon and I looked around. Small body, but it was far away. It could have been either girl being taken up into that hovercraft.

I began going through the forest nearby my open spot in the hedge, looking for my competition. Somewhere nearby was one of the girls, the one thing still standing between me and going home. I so badly wanted to go home. But I didn't want to run into her too far away from the ledge. It was my only weapon that gave me any sort of advantage.

She wasn't hiding. Betony was strolling through the woods looking for me, plain as day. The blood glistening on her ax and the fact that she was pretty close to where I was suggested she'd killed Brad, but not Hadley. Something else got Hadley. I tried not to think about that twelve-year-old girl dying as Maysilee had. It was already hard enough not to feel responsible for Maysilee's death.

There was nothing I could have done for Hadley, though. Even if I had wanted her to win instead of me, she had been too far away for me to help.

"Hello," I said softly to Betony. "Nice day for a walk in the woods."

Her grin was disturbing, manic, and as she came toward me I saw blood caked in her blonde hair. Brad hadn't gone down without a fight, it seemed. I backed away swiftly, but not too quickly. After all, she was going to need to be close enough that I could cut her with my knife. The ledge would only work if I got just the right scenario.

She swung her ax at me, but I was far enough away to avoid the swipe. That swing was probably to lull me into thinking it was going to be hand-to-hand combat, my knife and her ax at close quarters. I'd been paying plenty of attention during training, though, and I recalled vividly that she was deadly throwing ax, knife, really anything. I wasn't foolish enough to be lulled that way.

Realizing this, she threw her ax at my head and I ducked. It lodged into the tree behind me and I waited for her to come close to me, knowing she'd have to get it out. Betony approached me warily, but not warily enough. When she was near enough, I used my long arm-span to swipe at her fact, hoping to distract her at the least so I could slit her throat.

I did get her eye, blinding her on one side, but she still managed to clutch and retrieve her ax with one good eye, and my hesitation led to her swiping at me. She got my abdomen.

The battle raged as I headed back toward the ledge, desperately running, wanting to break down. I was literally holding in my intestines. She followed me and I was beginning to wish I'd sliced her forehead instead of her eye so that she wouldn't be able to see through the blood. In the heat of the moment, though, the thought hadn't occurred to me. I was moving backward toward the ridge, holding in my guts, trying to hit her and trying not to get hit by her ax.

Betony was growing desperate, I knew. She wanted her eye to be fixed, which it would if she beat me. I wanted my inside sewn back where they belonged, which I would only get if I could stay alive long enough to win.

I could see her getting desperate. I was running out of energy, anyway. She would throw the ax, I knew, but I had to anticipate. Would she expect me to dodge to the side or duck? Or would she think I would welcome death, staying where I was? Some people did then, probably people with their intestines pouring out of them might.

As it turned out, I didn't have the energy to make that decision. Just as she released the ax, I collapsed from blood loss, not losing consciousness but certainly losing my strength.

The ax flew over my head and over the ledge. I could tell that Betony was just watching me, waiting for the cannon to sound. She was sure I was dying, and if I hadn't known what I knew, I would have thought she was right. Instead, I stayed down, letting her believe she was the victor. It only took a few minutes for the ax to come back over the edge and bury itself in her puzzled face.

The cannon sounded moments later.

I took a deep, steadying breath, knowing I was unable to stand for the audiences to see my face. Instead, I just looked upward as the voice of the announcer said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the victor of the 50th Hunger Games, Haymitch Abernathy!"

I tried not to grimace. I knew the Games were far from over when the winner was announced and I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize my chances of surviving having my guts sewed back inside of me.

The hovercraft came down, putting the ladder low enough that I could wrap one shaking hand around the bottom rung, feel myself freeze, and be pulled up into the hovercraft.

I knew the cameras were still on me as they carried me into some sort of sterilized room to sew me back together. The pulled out a massive syringe and injected me with something and within minutes, my world was black.

I began fading in and out of consciousness as I woke up, getting pieces of wherever I was without really understanding. I knew I was in a white room, I knew that someone was feeding me. I knew that I was never awake long enough to determine if I had doors or windows. I knew I was strapped rather firmly to my bed.

When I came to full consciousness, I was no longer strapped down. I looked down at my naked skin and saw that not only was my abdomen fully healed, but there was no scar to speak of. It seemed that the Capitol had made me good as new, if not 'better' in their eyes. I saw the tribute outfit at the foot of the bed and sighed.

More cameras would be waiting when I got out of the room... When I figured out how to get out of the room, I noticed, realizing that there were no doors or windows anywhere that I could see. Deciding to get the clothes on and work from there, I climbed out of bed and pulled on the tribute outfit, wishing I could just burn the thing. Not while I was wearing it, of course, but I didn't ever want to see the thing again, much less feel it on my skin.

As soon as I was fully dressed, the wall opened up to the side of me and I realized that was my door. I was expected to great my 'team'... Aina, the Capitol people who dressed me up and taught me presentation and all that other useless stuff... The people who did nothing to keep me or Maysilee alive. I wanted to hate them, but it was such a relief to see people who weren't either going to die or kill me that I almost wanted to hug them.

I kept a hold on myself, however, my body and my emotions. I kept my stoic face, my steady gait. The cameras were still on me, I knew. I couldn't afford to behave based on emotion until I knew what was expected of me. The one thing I could count on was that Aina was on my side at that point, even if she hadn't really been before.

"Haymitch," she said slowly, standing as I reached them. "I'm afraid I have some bad news. The Gamemakers wouldn't let me deliver it to you while you were in the arena."

I blinked. Bad news? What bad news could there possibly be? I'd just survived the arena. Nothing else could seem bad by comparison.

"What?" I managed to say, noticing that my voice was hoarse from lack of use.

"It's Io," Aina said softly.

My heart absolutely stopped. The world was spinning. Io... What could be wrong with Io? She had been perfect when I'd left, a healthy, exuberant little girl. Perhaps not happy. She didn't want me to go to the Hunger Games, but I was sure she would be happy to have me home...

"What?" I repeated, completely on edge about what could have happened.

Aina looked down at her hands for a moment, then back up at me as she said sadly, "She got very ill a few days into competition. By day four, she was dead. They didn't want me to tell you, thinking it might affect your competition. They... they made sure I didn't get the news to you."

I knew exactly how to translate that: The Gamemakers were blocking any aid to me, and probably Maysilee when she was with me, trying to keep Aina from giving me some hint my baby sister had died.

Suddenly, my anger at Aina melted away. I didn't know how hard she'd tried to tell me. I didn't know if she'd even really tried to tell me at all, but I was guessing that was the case if she was risking saying something so obviously pointing out an action of the Gamemakers to prevent sponsor aid from reaching even a single tribute, much less the implications that might have had for Maysilee. It was a very big risk for a lie, especially because we were almost certainly on camera, being shown to everyone in Panem.

"Well," I sighed, trying to hold onto stoic. Stoic was going to get me through I just had to keep thinking about the cameras, about the fact that back in District Twelve my mother was grieving my sister, no celebrating my survival. I was doing the same. "I suppose we'll have a memorial when I get home. Anything else?"

"No," Aina said softly. "No, that's about it."

But I could tell from the way she wasn't meeting my eyes that it wasn't it at all, but I couldn't figure out what she was trying to tell me.

I tried not to think about it as I was taken by the prep team to be prettied up. They liked to talk about what had happened during the Games, which I didn't like. I tried to tune it out. I didn't want to think about my victory, about the volcano, about Maysilee being attacked by a flock of birds.

Maysilee. I was too late to save her, and even though it was probably a good thing in the way, that I was, but I hated thinking that. I'd lived, and she'd died. Just like that, she was dead. She wasn't ever going home.

They dressed me up in a blue suit and did my hair. I didn't engage in chat. I didn't want to let them engage in chat. I wanted to curl up in the nearest bed and cry into a pillow, no cameras, no expectant faces... Nothing. I wanted to go home.

Maysilee was dead. Io was dead. Why was I still alive?

Salli. Salli wasn't dead. That was something, I told myself as I was led out to the stage where I would watch my own Games, where they would have a camera showing all of Panem my face as I watched the highlights.

Sitting there with Caesar Flickermann, I tried to put out of my mind all of the things that were bothering me most, knowing he would be picking at them the next day in the three-hour long live interview.

"So, Haymitch Abernathy!" Caesar said happily. "You certainly impressed all of Panem with your thinking your way through a number of problems. How do you feel right now?"

"I'm fine, I guess," I said with a shrug. I didn't feel like gushing out my pain at all the death to Caesar, much less the entire nation.

"Not a man of too many words, then!" Caesar chuckled. "Well, we've got plenty of time to pick apart your experiences tomorrow, so let's just get to rewatching the Hunger Games!"

I braced myself as I turned to the screen that I knew was playing the very footage every person in Panem was watching in that moment. I swallowed waiting anxiously for that first big moment, the moment in the bloodbath where it all began, the moment where Brad took a shortsword and lopped off Hayley Lenaerts's head.

I clenched and unclenched my fingers on either side of my lap where the cameras couldn't see them. I didn't want them to know that I had a problem with watching a twelve-year-old sweetheart get decapitated. I was glad I didn't have to see anyone else's faces as they watched, because Marlene, Hayley's mother, was probably watching with pain in her eyes. I couldn't take pain in somebody else's eyes. I could just imagine what my own mother's eyes would look like when I came home and had to face life without Io in it.

I had been upset when my parents told me that she was on the way. I didn't want another sibling, I wanted to live my own life, not have to worry about helping pay for another mouth to feed with tesserae when the time came.

Death after death came before my eyes on the screen as I thought about how I'd changed my mind about a third sibling after Io was born and completely stole my heart with her pretty little smile and her sweet, sweet way of loving everything, especially me. Every time a twelve-year-old died, I could almost picture her being drawn in her own reaping one day, and I was almost glad she was already dead.

Tomi with the poisoned fruit. An obscene amount of volcano victims. And then we got to the three Maysilee and I killed when they snuck up on me in the woods.

They didn't show much of my journeys with Maysilee. People were dying in other parts of the woods, and the camera spent far more time on Betony's hunt and kill mission than on mine and Maysilee's quest for the edge of the arena.

And then it got to Maysilee and I parting ways and I had to force myself to watch as the birds pecked her to death. I hadn't realized how lucky I had been, not seeing that bit for myself. The screams, they were nothing new. I had heard those screams in my nightmares even in my drugged state strapped to a bed in the Capitol. I knew I was going to be hearing them in my nightmares for a very long time, if not the rest of my life. No, it was the blood, the look on her face, the panic in her eyes. I felt responsible, somehow, even though I knew I couldn't have done a thing.

The deaths after that, they were nothing. Even little Hadley and the squirrels, which really wasn't a pretty death, almost as bad as Maysilee's, it did nothing to me. I just watched and waited, knowing my battle with Betony was fast approaching. It took everything I had in me not to shift in my seat as the me on the screen came into contact with the girl who had been from District One, knowing that the end was very, very near.

Even though I was fighting for my life on the screen, though, I found myself not particularly attached to the events I was forced to watch.

There we were, battling on the edge of the cliff, me clinging to my intestines and hope of survival, her with her eye basically gorged out, the blood streaming down her once-pretty face. There was nothing pretty about her in that moment, bloody and filled with a desperate fury, the notion of needing to kill or be killed.

I was hardly watching as her ax was tossed over me, over the ledge, hardly caring as it came back up, lodging in her face, penetrating her brain and killing her. I didn't even listen as I was announced the winner of the Hunger Games.

I didn't feel like the winner of anything. All I could feel was loss.


	10. Becoming Haymitch Abernathy: Haymitch

I sat through that banquet that was supposedly in my honor, not smiling, not really interacting. I wasn't really expected to. I hadn't won the interest of Panem through my smiles. It was my mind, and my mind wasn't smiling. I'd lost my sister. Maysilee was dead. Aina had basically left me to die, except maybe she hadn't. I probably wouldn't ever really know, because if it hadn't been her choice we would never be somewhere she could tell me without putting herself at risk, and if it had been, she wasn't likely to tell me the truth about it. I would never really know, and so I didn't smile, and I was almost glad that no one really expected it of me.

Through the whole night I looked around at the sponsors, who may or may not have attempted to give me some sort of support during the Games, and wished that they would have done something for Io, sent some medicine to District Twelve to cure her. They had cures for everything in the Capitol. It would have been a trivial matter for them.

But they probably didn't even know she was sick until she was reported dead, a side note to my fame for fighting for my life for the enjoyment of those rich people with cures for everything. They wouldn't have heard her name, seen her face, really cared of her existence, until I reached the final eight. She was dead by then. There was no need for them to know of her. It made me angry, but at the same time, it wasn't their fault, and I knew it. They could have saved her, if they'd wanted to, and to have a desire to they would have had to know who she was.

Suddenly I felt sorry for the Capitol.

We in the Districts had always been a bit ignorant, kept that way of each other and of the Capitol, 'for the good of Panem' the propaganda would say. But the people of the Capitol, good-hearted they mostly were, were kept ignorant of the suffering of the Districts, because if they thought of us as people like them, as what we were, they would no longer be able to take enjoyment in watching our children kill each other each year. The primary way of keeping us in line would be lost to the government of Panem, and the Districts might even gain some power and improvement.

But I wasn't supposed to think of that, I was supposed to be thinking about the victory I had just so hollowly acquired over the other tributes, celebrating my own survival. I had thought it would have been easier to do, but I suppose I'd never really imagined it coming with the news of my sweet sister's death.

Maybe it wasn't anybody's fault, I told myself, knowing instinctively that it was a lie. Maybe I should just get on with my life and mourn her when the cameras were gone and not think about blame. Maybe it would be easier that way.

Getting in the Capitol shower that night, I didn't feel like playing with the funny scents or seeing how hot or cold I could make the water, as I had when I first experienced them. I was interested in washing away my disgust, washing away the feeling of the lies, the film of hiding my pain that seemed to be seeping into the very pores of my skin. The water was scalding, and would leave my skin redder than it had been in a long time, but I didn't care.

It wasn't helping, though, so I changed the water from scalding to freezing, the shock of the extreme change in temperature numbing me to my pain and anger for a brief moment, but once my body adjusted to the freezing-cold water, it all came flooding back and I knew in that moment that nothing I had at my disposal would take away the pain. My mother had always said that things that hurt more than a person thought they could bear would fade with time and become bearable. Somehow, I didn't think it could be true about Io's death, about the arena, but I had to believe it or I couldn't go on.

So I finally turned off the water, deciding that I'd washed away as much of my pain and anger as I could for the time being, and I grabbed one of the perfect Capitol towels, drying myself off haphazardly, hating the warmth the towel brought because it was a superficial, false sense of security and safety and comfort. Io was dead. Maysilee was dead. Hayley and Hadley and Betony and all the rest of them, they were all dead. I was alive, by some miracle.

Maybe it wasn't a miracle, I decided, tossing aside the offending towel and pulling on some offending night clothes, crawling into the offending Capitol bed and pulling the offending Capitol sheets up to my chin, fighting the impulses to vomit and shiver. I would not give in. I would not break. I was sure that they had cameras on me, even in that moment, and they would not have the satisfaction of seeing Haymitch Abernathy break down and cry. I was nobody's puppet, no pawn of the Capitol.

But I was, and I knew it intrinsically as I stared up at the ceiling. They had all of the control over my life, and they would continue to control me. I would take one of the houses in the Victor's Village with my family where they could surely watch me constantly. I would have to return every year to help Aina with the mentoring of future tributes whether I wanted to or not, until I'd trained another male winner from District Twelve. If the past was anything to go by, Aina would probably be long dead by the time that happened.

The Capitol owned me, and I had nowhere else to go.

The following morning I dressed the clothes set at the foot of my bed, probably by an Avox, and I sighed, knowing I was going to be poked and prodded by a stylist once more, forced to parade in front of the whole of Panem as Caesar Flickerman had his opportunity to interview me on my experiences in the arena. I knew I would be asked about my sister, about the kids I'd killed, about Maysilee and how her death had felt. I would be asked about the moment with the ax and the cliff... I was sure of it.

I ate my breakfast quickly and in silence, not wanting to interact with Aina any more than necessary, knowing that I would have to interact with her sooner or later. We were going to have to work together, year after year, probably for the rest of her life. I wasn't going to start that off on a bad note by trying to make myself talk to her before either of us were ready. There was already so much bitterness and anger between us... It just felt wrong, trying to make things better. That could only make everything worse.

So as soon as I was finished with breakfast, I followed the familiar path to my stylist, allowing the prep team to greet me excitedly, allowed them to undress me and begin going over what they would have to fix before the stylist got ahold of me.

Minor things, they said. Nothing like when I first came in. I'd been cleaned up when I was patched up and my intestines were shoved into my body. Apparently they'd forgotten that part, because they didn't even mention how not noticeable the scar on my abdomen was, only how soft my hair was and how clean my skin had gotten.

How could they stand there and marvel at my clean skin while children were dying all over the place? They didn't just die in the arena. They died in the districts where there were no doctors to fix them, where the apothecaries could only do so much. Like Io. Like probably hundreds of children every year. The children who just got sick, the children who angered the Peacekeepers because they were too young to know better... The children who had to work too young and died in mining accidents... There were so many ways for a child to die in the districts. If a child died in the Capitol ever, I would be surprised.

The stylist said nothing to me, and that was just fine by me. I wasn't interested in talking about anything, especially knowing that I would be expected to essentially carry on a three hour conversation. It wouldn't be the end of my time in the public eye, but it would almost signify the end of my time in the Capitol until the Victory Tour, in about six months. I could handle that. I just had to get through the three hours and then not do anything I would regret between the end of those three hours and the arrival of my train back in District Twelve.

I was lead out to the stage in a daze, probably looking dull and uninterested on camera, but that was fine. It fit in with my surly, loner image I'd given myself through the course of my games. I sat down opposite Caesar with an uninterested face, because I wasn't interested in him, or his questions, or the people he worked for who had taken so much from me. I wasn't interested. I wanted to go home.

Mostly he made jokes and asked me questions, which I answered briefly as possible, careful not to let how I was feeling, how angry and bitter I was, seep into my words or tone. Angering the Capitol could be dangerous.

I was surprised to find that he didn't ask me once about the force field or my battle with Betony. He usually spent more time on the final show-down than anything else. Caesar skated around it completely, and something about that made me feel uneasy, but I couldn't decide what or why.

He did ask me about Maysilee.

"Now, your district partner... I'm sorry, one of your district partners, was Maysilee Donner."

I didn't say anything in response to that. I simply nodded slightly. It wasn't as though I didn't expect such a question.

"You two got very close," Caesar said sympathetically. "Would you say it was anything your girl back home would be jealous about?"

The question surprised me, but in hindsight it shouldn't have. She was a pretty girl and we spent much of our time in the arena together. I'd even shown emotion at her death, in a way. But Salli knew me well enough, she would understand.

Wouldn't she?

Yes, I decided, she would, but I realized I hadn't answered the question yet and he was still looking at me expectantly, so I shrugged slightly and said, "I doubt it."

Caesar obviously wanted more from me, but I said nothing else about Salli. He did say a few more things about Maysilee, but it was easy to answer those sorts of questions without too many words or two much outward emotion.

"Tell me, Haymitch," Caesar said, "because it's so hard to tell with you, which death affected you most?"

Was he really asking me that question?

Io. Io's death cut me to the core.

"I don't know," I said slowly, not wanting to bring my sister into the whole sordid affair any more than I had to. "Probably Hadley. Seeing something like that right away sort of sets the tone."

Not to mention that she was twelve, sweet, and completely undeserving of such a death, but I wouldn't do anyone any good by saying that out loud.

By the end of the interview, I found myself fighting the urge to punch Caesar Flickerman in the face, but I knew that wouldn't have done any good, either. It wasn't really his fault, just like it wasn't my stylists' fault, or Aina's fault.

That night, I woke up on the train tossing and turning, terrified that I was about to be killed. It took me a moment to realize that I was brandishing a kitchen knife into the darkness.

How had that knife gotten into my hand? Had I brought it with me from dinner? I couldn't remember, but I did remember having a bit more wine that Aina thought I should have. I hadn't cared what she thought. She'd let Maysilee and me fend for ourselves.

Was that how the knife ended up in my hand? I wiped the cold sweat off my brow with the sleeve of the nightshirt I was wearing and looked down at the knife. Had I been drunk like the man who hung out by the slag heap, crazed from his addiction to white liquor? It would explain why I couldn't recall the knife making it to my bed.

But why had I drunk so much? Because Aina advised me not to? Perhaps that was what had gotten me started, but I vaguely recalled a numb, empty feeling that was so much better than the pain and the guilt before I lost all memory to blankness.

I must have grabbed the knife somewhere in the blankness, because I didn't think it was in the numb. Somehow the knife felt right in my hand, made me feel safer, even though I knew that I really wasn't any safer for it. Still, I closed my fingers around the cooler part of the handle, feeling how the knife felt against my skin.

It wasn't as nice as the one I'd used the arena, but it hadn't been made for killing like that one. It would do if someone actually did come upon me in the middle of the night, but probably only if they were unarmed.

There was a danger in taking a knife to bed, though. If my brother or my parents came in to wake me up, I could injure them without being fully aware I was doing it. Or Salli... No, I wouldn't have a knife when I was lying with Salli.

I should marry her, I decided. When I was back, I should ask her to marry me. Maybe I would wait until the Victory Tour was over to officially propose, to keep her out of the chaos as best I could.

But children... There would be children because Salli would want children, but I wasn't so sure I could do that to a child. Children of victors were almost always selected in the reaping. Marlene's dead daughters were the proof of that. It really had nothing to do with odds at that point, and any child I had would almost be sure to be picked. Even my brother had odds completely out of his favor. Even without the need of tesserae, Archibald still had to be in the drawing once.

I knew we were reaching District Twelve just by checking my watch, but I wasn't ready to go down the train and meet Aina, so I tossed the knife aside, groaned as I sat up and my head began to throb, and grabbed some clothes to get into the shower. I wasn't going to let the effects of the drinking or my new detested position in Panem change my ways. I stumbled toward the shower, but halfway toward turning on the water, I'd realized that I'd taken one the night before, albeit the memory of the event was rather hazy, so I just pulled on a change of clothes.

When I looked at myself in the mirror as I ran a comb quickly through my hair, knowing that the cameras and my mother would expect it of me, I barely recognized the boy the Capitol thought was what I should look like. My face was fuller than it had ever been, which contrasted sharply with my empty eyes.

I closed my eyes firmly, trying not to think about how Io would have greeted me at the train station, not wanting to think about what I had lost in the Games. I wasn't in the arena any more. The Games were over, my Games were over, and I would never have to look at the Games from inside the arena ever again. They couldn't take anything else from me.

Except they could. They could take my brother from me, and they could do it so soon, so swiftly. I would have to teach him how to fight, even though it was illegal. I would have to teach him how to survive, the things nobody taught me, because he wasn't as smart as me. I wasn't sure if he'd be able to figure it out, and there probably wouldn't be a volcano to kill off a bunch of careers and help him out.

I made my way up the train toward food, toward the last Capitol meal I would have before arriving back home in District Twelve, where I would be left more or less alone until the Victory Tour. Aina was already there, but she didn't acknowledge my presence and I didn't ask her to. I simply poured some coffee and piled rolls and apples onto my plate. I wasn't ready to talk to Aina yet, and she seemed to know and respect that.

Maybe Aina and I wouldn't not talk to each other forever. Maybe we would be able to be like friends, eventually. After all, we would probably work together until one of us died. I didn't particularly want to be as we were until one of us died.

Still, we ate our breakfast in silence, we went our separate ways for the short remainder of the trip, and when we pulled into District Twelve with the whole of the District meeting us at the platform, excited to see their victor who none of them particularly cared for before he won them extra provisions for the year, Aina pulled me aside and whispered, "Watch yourself, Haymitch. It's not over yet. Be careful."

I didn't know what she meant, but if she was risking talking to me to warn me about something, if she was willing to pass me a warning right under their noses, it had to be important, whatever it was.


	11. The Game Has Begun: Haymitch

My family was there for me at the train station, crying what the Capitol could interpret as tears of joy, and I wanted to think of them that way as well, but I knew better. They were mourning Io still, and mourning all the things I had to do to get back to them alive. Maybe there was some joy mixed in, I didn't really know, but I shook my father's hand, shook my brother's hand, and let my mother wrap her shaking, thin arms around me, kissing my face urgently, the tears streaking down my skin from her eyes.

It didn't take long for my family to move our small number of possessions from my father's home in the Seam (which would still be ours in case something happened to me and my family needed to return to it) to my new home in the Victor's village. Salli helped us move everything, smiling sadly all the while. After Io's death and Prissy's death and watching me becoming emotional at Maysilee's death, she'd been through more than should be asked of a person, and yet she still found it in her to put on some sort of smile, if not as radiant a smile as she'd had before I was selected for the Games.

"Well, it's a very nice house, Haymitch," she said with a smile as she settled down beside me on what would be my new bed. "Very beautiful."

I grunted a sort of agreement. It _was_ a very nice house, but it made me feel emptier, more alone. I didn't feel like I was home, I felt like I'd just been thrust into another foreign place, a new sort of arena, and told to figure out how to survive. At least I wouldn't be expected to kill the other occupants.

"Haymitch, there are things we're going to need to talk about," she said softly.

And there it was. I'd gone places, as her parents would have said. I had more than enough of an income as a victor to support my family, Salli, and any children she might figure out how to talk me into having for the rest of my life. What reason would there possibly be for my not asking her to marry me?

Maybe it was the seeing Maysilee's hollow, dead in my nightmares every night, the fact that I kept half-expecting Io to run into the room and hug me around the neck like she used to do when I picked her up and spun her around in the air.

But she was right, we couldn't avoid talking about it forever. My life had completely changed, and there would be even more changes when the Victory Tour and the next set of Games came along. They weren't changes I wanted, but that didn't mean I should ignore changes I'd long wanted, expected, and opened myself to. After all, hadn't I simply been waiting until I could support her to ask her to marry me?

"Salli, you know that if we got married, either we'd live here with my family or they'd have to move back into the Seam."

"I wouldn't mind them staying here if that's what they wanted," she said with a shrug. "It's a big house for just us, and I think it would be just us for a while, anyway. At least until Archie's old enough to get a job and help out your family. Because you know that they're not going to want to live off you if they can get by without."

She was right. In fact, the second I said we would be getting married they'd probably insist on moving back into the house in the Seam.

"I guess we should consider it," I sighed. "Give it a week, and then we'll let them know. They'll be more likely to stay with us if they feel even a little bit attached to the place and we've got to give them time for that. Besides... I've just had a lot of death for a while now and I'm not sure it would be the right time for making an announcement like that. You know?"

Salli nodded, kissing my jaw.

"I think that's a great idea."

So we waited a week, and the cameras were starting to disappear, which was nice. I was feeling less and less like I had to watch over my shoulder for someone watching me, although I had a feeling that someone was watching me anyway, like there were hidden cameras all over my house. My prison.

Salli was so excited about the prospect of getting married, though, that I kept my concerns and paranoia to myself. She didn't need more to think about than what sort of wedding dress she would want, what she wanted to eat at the celebration.

When we told my parents that we were going to get married, they automatically announced that they would move back to the Seam, give us some privacy. No matter how much Salli begged, my parents didn't change their decision. They could be very proud, very stubborn, and I had the feeling that they didn't care much for the Victor's Village, anyway. Truthfully, I didn't think much of it, either, but it was nice, living in a house that didn't have Io's old room in it. There were no memories haunting me in my new house, so I let them move out.

Salli visited them just about every day, which I suppose was what did it, in the end. Even though we were sharing a bed, even though we were going to be married, independent, as soon as I was back from the Victory Tour, Salli spent so much time with my family. She had, in fact, settled it so that while I was away on the Victory Tour, she would stay with my family in the Seam instead of in my house in the Victor's Village.

"It's closer to my parents, anyway," she pointed out. "And I'm practically a part of the family."

And it made too much sense to argue with her, so I didn't bother.

I should have argued, though, as I found out later, but I got onto the train to travel around the Districts, and to the Capitol, and then back to a massive celebration in District Twelve, at the expense of the Capitol, where Salli and I would announce our wedding day. Salli kissed me goodbye, and there was a lot of excited chatter as she did so, but I got onto the train and travelled away, Aina sitting there, shaking her head sadly.

"What?" I sighed.

"I don't know yet," she muttered, looking out the window to where Salli and my family were waving. "But I have a feeling we're going to find out sooner rather than later."

I didn't ask what she meant. I didn't want to know what she meant. I was still a bit upset with her for not finding some way to tell me about Io, some way to warn me before I made it out of the arena.

"I think I'm going to try to get a nap," I sighed. I didn't want to deal with her cryptic-ness.

I spent the time in the Districts trying not to look at the people who were at the front, the parents and family of the tributes who had died in my Games, some of whom I had killed. They didn't seem to begrudge me my victory, at least not in the outer areas, but the closer we got to the Capitol the more I felt as though I was being glared at. The Career's parents actually glared at me, and someone's father spat at my shoe, which I didn't react to because I wasn't sure what the peacekeepers would do to him if I did.

When we reached the Capitol, my world fell apart. Aina sat down beside me on the train and frowned. I knew she had something to tell me, but I also got the feeling that I didn't want to hear it.

"Haymitch," she said softly, "I'm so sorry."

That was all she had to say and I already hated her for whatever it was she was having to tell me, even though for all her apologizes and bearing of bad news I knew it wasn't at all her fault. I hated her because she was easier to hate than the abstract of the government or the Capitol, who were really to blame for all the things that had happened.

She told me how my family's house in the Seam had burned down, that everyone inside was dead.

Who was inside, I'd asked.

Everyone, she'd told me. My brother, my parents... Salli.

I was alone. Everyone I'd ever loved was really and truly gone. All I had left in the world was Aina, and I hated her. Maybe I shouldn't have hated her, but it felt better to do so. Perhaps I would be able to get over the hatred later, but not before the Victory Tour was over, at the very least.

Until then, I just nodded, letting her know that I understood, but I wasn't ready to talk yet. Then I got up, went to my room, and started smashing everything I could, desperately trying to lift the sick feeling in my stomach, the heavy feeling in my chest.

I wouldn't be marrying Salli because Salli was dead. My family was dead. Nothing mattered anymore. The Capitol had killed them. I wanted to die. I didn't want to go back to District Twelve knowing I would be alone.

But that was the point. I had paid, I realized, for showing up the Capitol, for outstaging and outsmarting the Gamemakers. The fact that I won wasn't the problem, it was that I used an unintended part of the arena to do it, to survive, to kill Betony from District One. That wasn't okay, so they killed them, they killed them all. Maybe they'd killed Io, although even in my fury I couldn't quite see the point of that. It didn't seem like something they would have done.

They killed Salli. They took Salli from me, the last person I truly felt I could trust and confide in. And there was this pain in my chest and these tears in my eyes and I didn't know what to do, how to make it stop. Nothing could bring them back, certainly.

The alcohol made it stop. I barely ate a bite of food at the banquet at the Capitol. I hardly talked to a soul. But once I found the alcohol, once I reveled in its numbing powers, I felt I'd found a friend, one last friend for the rest of my miserable existence.

Nobody bothered me after that, or if they did, I didn't remember it much later. I probably had to talk with some people... my stylist and prep team, Aina certainly said something to me... But what did it matter? Nothing _really_ mattered. The boozed tasted nice and felt warm as it made its way to my belly, and that warmth was a nice contrast to the cold I felt whenever I got just sober enough to remember why I was drinking in the first place, why I'd started to actively seek the numbness of drunkenness.

And if they knew, if they understood, if they'd lived what I'd lived, they'd be drinking too, all of them.

Who were they? Who was them? I wasn't sure anymore. Someone or something to do with the Capitol, though, I knew that. I couldn't get on the train fast enough that would be taking me all the way back to District Twelve for one final feast before I could wallow in my Victor's home until summer came, six months of virtual solitude and despair. Maybe, just maybe, I'd even be able to drink myself to death before that day came so I wouldn't have to deal with the Capitol ever again.

My home didn't feel like home when I got there, though, and it wasn't the ever-present haze I'd begun surrounding myself with.

The train station, that was where I'd last said my goodbyes to them all, to Salli. I was going to marry her, and she was dead and I would never marry her or hold her or even see her beautiful face again. And the town, where they'd set up the feast in the square, in front of the Justice Building, that was my sister's favorite place to go on any day but a reaping, but especially during holidays when everything was festive.

She would have loved the feast, had she been alive.

The foods, they were good. My mother would have loved the opportunity not to cook, to simply enjoy the feast with us, to be thankful that her son had made it home alive. But she couldn't. Because she wasn't alive anymore. She was gone. Dead. They'd killed her and taken that moment from her, that opportunity. And so the food tasted like ash in my mouth and the drink little better.

And the house that my brother had been so fond of, that Salli and I were going to make our home, that my father had admired the craftsmanship of... it felt like a cage, a prison. Maybe it was. It was difficult to tell reality from the phantoms of my imagination anymore.

And I lifted the bottle to my lips after the cameras had gone, although I hadn't waited for them to leave. What did I care if they knew about my drinking? It was their faults, all their faults for what they'd done to me, what they'd taken from me. It wasn't enough to have the last vestiges of my childhood ripped from me, or to lose my sister. I had to lose everything before they were satisfied.

I hoped they were satisfied. I hoped that I would find out who to blame for what had happened to me, for what had been done to me, because once I did, once I found the other people they had wronged (their one flaw, I could see through the haze of booze, in putting victors together every year to socialize during the Games), I would build and army. I would have my revenge. I would end the Hunger Games if it was the last thing I did.

**A/N: This is, I suppose, an epilogue of sorts. If you're still interested in reading some of my Hunger Games works, check out **_**Finnick's Story**_**, **_**Scarlett's Story**_**, and **_**Luke's Story**_** (which is the one I'm writing now). The next Haymitch POV story I'm going to put up will be called **_**The 74th Games: Renewing the Story**_**. It will be several weeks probably before I even start writing that, and there WILL be spoilers about future stories for the other section of the series, so if you don't want spoilers, I'd wait until I get to at least **_**The 74th Games: Willow's Story**_** in the other series. If you're not reading the other series or don't care about spoilers, then keep an eye out! :D I also have a multitude of Harry Potter stories, a Sherlock story, and an A Song of Ice and Fire story for you to check out while waiting! Thanks for reading this story and making it what it is! May the odds be ever in your favor!**

** -J**


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